Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Interference Cancellation of ECG Signals

As an important biological signal, electrocardiogram (ECG) signals provide a valuable basis for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of several diseases. However, its reference significance is based on the effective acquisition and correct recognition of ECG signals. In fact, this mV-level weak signal can be easily affected by various interferences caused by the power of magnetic field, patient respiratory motion or contraction, and so on from the sampling terminal to the receiving and display end. The overlapping interference affects the quality of ECG waveform, leading to the false detection and recognition of wave groups, and thus causing misdiagnosis or faulty treatment. Therefore, the elimination of the interference of the ECG signal and the subsequent wave group identification technology has been a hot research topic, and their study has important significance. Based on the above, this paper introduces two improved adaptive algorithms based on the classical least mean square (LMS) algorithm by introducing symbolic functions and block-processing concepts.
Do Long-Term Investors Improve Corporate Decision Making?

We study the effect of investor horizons on a comprehensive set of corporate decisions. We argue that monitoring by long-term investors generates decision making that maximizes shareholder value. We find that long-term investors strengthen governance and restrain managerial misbehaviors such as earnings management and financial fraud. They discourage a range of investment and financing activities but encourage payouts. Innovation increases, in quantity and quality. Shareholders benefit through higher profitability that the stock market does not fully anticipate, and lower risk.
BzTree: A High-Performance Latch-free Range Index for Non-Volatile Memory

Storing a database (rows and indexes) entirely in non-volatile memory (NVM) potentially enables both high performance and fast recovery. To fully exploit parallelism on modern CPUs, modern main-memory databases use latch-free (lock-free) index structures, e.g. Bw-tree or skip lists. To achieve high performance NVM-resident indexes also need to be latch-free. This paper describes the design of the BzTree, a latch-free B-tree index designed for NVM. The BzTree uses a persistent multi-word compare-and-swap operation (PMwCAS) as a core building block, enabling an index design that has several important advantages compared with competing index structures such as the Bw-tree. First, the BzTree is latch-free yet simple to implement. Second, the BzTree is fast - showing up to 2x higher throughput than the Bw-tree in our experiments. Third, the BzTree does not require any special-purpose recovery code. Recovery is near-instantaneous and only involves rolling back (or forward) any PMwCAS operations that were in-flight during failure. Our end-to-end recovery experiments of BzTree report an average recovery time of 145 μs. Finally, the same BzTree implementation runs seamlessly on both volatile RAM and NVM, which greatly reduces the cost of code maintenance.
Workshop: Transcriptome assembly and isoform expression level estimation from biased RNA-Seq reads

Summary form only given: RNA-Seq uses the high-throughput sequencing technology to identify and quantify transcriptome at an unprecedented high resolution and low cost. However, RNA-Seq reads are usually not uniformly distributed and biases in RNA-Seq data post great challenges in many applications including transcriptome assembly and the expression level estimation of genes or isoforms. Much effort has been made in the literature to calibrate the expression level estimation from biased RNA-Seq data, but the effect of biases on transcriptome assembly remains largely unexplored. Here, we propose a statistical framework for both transcriptome assembly and isoform expression level estimation from biased RNA-Seq data. Using a quasi-multinomial distribution model, our method is able to capture various types of RNA-Seq biases, including positional, sequencing and mappability biases. Our experimental resultson simulated and real RNA-Seq datasets exhibit interesting effects of RNA-Seq biases on both transcriptome assembly and isoform expression level estimation. The advantage of our method is clearly shown in the experimental analysis by its high sensitivity and precision in transcriptome assembly and the high concordance of its estimated expression levels with qRT-PCR data.
Pharmacokinetics of gentamicin eluted from a regenerating bone graft substitute

Objectives Deep bone and joint infections (DBJI) are directly intertwined with health, demographic change towards an elderly population, and wellbeing. The elderly human population is more prone to acquire infections, and the consequences such as pain, reduced quality of life, morbidity, absence from work and premature retirement due to disability place significant burdens on already strained healthcare systems and societal budgets. DBJIs are less responsive to systemic antibiotics because of poor vascular perfusion in necrotic bone, large bone defects and persistent biofilm-based infection. Emerging bacterial resistance poses a major threat and new innovative treatment modalities are urgently needed to curb its current trajectory. Materials and Methods We present a new biphasic ceramic bone substitute consisting of hydroxyapatite and calcium sulphate for local antibiotic delivery in combination with bone regeneration. Gentamicin release was measured in four setups: 1) in vitro elution in Ringer’s solution; 2) local elution in patients treated for trochanteric hip fractures or uncemented hip revisions; 3) local elution in patients treated with a bone tumour resection; and 4) local elution in patients treated surgically for chronic corticomedullary osteomyelitis. Results The release pattern in vitro was comparable with the obtained release in the patient studies. No recurrence was detected in the osteomyelitis group at latest follow-up (minimum 1.5 years). Conclusions This new biphasic bone substitute containing antibiotics provides safe prevention of bone infections in a range of clinical situations. The in vitro test method predicts the in vivo performance and makes it a reliable tool in the development of future antibiotic-eluting bone-regenerating materials. Cite this article: M. Stravinskas, P. Horstmann, J. Ferguson, W. Hettwer, M. Nilsson, S. Tarasevicius, M. M. Petersen, M. A. McNally, L. Lidgren. Pharmacokinetics of gentamicin eluted from a regenerating bone graft substitute: In vitro and clinical release studies. Bone Joint Res 2016;5:427–435. DOI: 10.1302/2046-3758.59. BJR-2016-0108.R1.
Examining the sexual function and related attitudes among aged women: A cross- sectional study

Background: Sexual function and its subsequent satisfaction are among the most important aspects of women’s life. However, this instinct could be influenced by some factors such as diseases, drug using, aging, and hormonal and physiologic changes associated with menopause, and sexual behavior. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence rates of sexual dysfunction, and related attitudes among aged women in Jahrom, Iran. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 746 postmenopausal women aged between 50 and 89 years old who had referred to obstetric and gynecologic clinic in Jahrom, from April to October 2014. Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire was used order to assess the sexual function. The cases were classified into three categories according to the attitude scores: negative (17-32), medium (33-38), and positive (39-48). One-way ANOVA test was used to determine the relationship between FSFI and attitude scores. Results: The participants’ mean±SD age was 60.10±6.89 years and the total mean score of FSFI was 19.31±8.5. In addition, 81.5% of the women had sexual dysfunction (FSFI< 26.55) and only 147 women (18.5%) had normal sexual function (FSFI> 26.55). Almost 62.1% the women displayed a negative attitude towards sexuality and only 18.8% women had positive attitude. Feeling of dyspareunia (p= 0.02), lubrication (p< 0.0001), orgasm (p= 0.002) and satisfaction (p= 0.002) were significantly different between three categories of attitudes regarding sexuality, respectively Conclusion: Our data showed that sexual disorders were highly prevalent among postmenopausal women. The most affected problems were arousal, dyspareunia, and lubrication. More than half of the women had negative attitude towards sexual function consequently this could affect their sexual function. So, it seems screening of sexual dysfunction for finding the causes in women should be the main sexual health program. Also, it would be important to emphasis the role of physicians and experts on education and counseling in this subject.
Offline Sketch Parsing via Shapeness Estimation

In this work, we target at the problem of offline sketch parsing, in which the temporal orders of strokes are unavailable. It is more challenging than most of existing work, which usually leverages the temporal information to reduce the search space. Different from traditional approaches in which thousands of candidate groups are selected for recognition, we propose the idea of shapeness estimation to greatly reduce this number in a very fast way. Based on the observation that most of hand-drawn shapes with well-defined closed boundaries can be clearly differentiated from nonshapes if normalized into a very small size, we propose an efficient shapeness estimation method. A compact feature representation as well as its efficient extraction method is also proposed to speed up this process. Based on the proposed shapeness estimation, we present a three-stage cascade framework for offline sketch parsing. The shapeness estimation technique in this framework greatly reduces the number of false positives, resulting in a 96.2% detection rate with only 32 candidate group proposals, which is two orders of magnitude less than existing methods. Extensive experiments show the superiority of the proposed framework over stateof-the-art works on sketch parsing in both effectiveness and efficiency, even though they leveraged the temporal information of strok.
Towards Emotion-Based Collaborative Software Engineering

There is a symbiotic relationship between collaborative software engineering and the recent research in detection of four kinds of task-based emotions: interruptibility, difficulty perception, frustration, and attention. Predictions of these emotions can trigger opportunistic collaborations, make collaborations more purposeful, influence how activities are scheduled, and give implicit feedback from collaborators. Conversely, concepts from software engineering can further advance the nascent area of emotion detection by creating reusable analysis, annotation and prediction tools and architectures that make the notion of multi-iteration application- and emotion-independent prediction tractable.
Stakeholders and tropical reforestation: challenges, trade‐offs, and strategies in dynamic environments

Reforestation involves potential trade‐offs: hard choices between environmental and social benefits, individual and community benefits, and among stakeholders who bear different costs and benefits. In this manuscript, we aim to show that successful long‐term reforestation requires stakeholder engagement beyond planning stages and a recognition of the dynamism of stakeholder outlooks as stakeholders’ opportunities, relationships, interests, and roles change over time. We first summarize lessons from recent literature on stakeholder involvement within reforestation efforts. We then present findings from a multiple‐stakeholder workshop organized in west‐central Mexico, in which we illustrate their choices on how to navigate trade‐offs among different reforestation intervention strategies (agroforestry/silvopastoral, natural regeneration, native species reforestation, commercial plantations). We confirm that individual stakeholders’ circumstances, interests, and roles, as well as the contextual factors shaping them, are dynamic, continually changing the nature of the choices stakeholders face. Finally, we propose a four‐phase pathway for addressing dynamic trade‐offs and synergies in stakeholder participation in order to select, implement, and sustain successful reforestation activities. The pathway comprises four phases: (1) collaborate to devise a reforestation strategy through dialogue about dynamic trade‐offs; (2) pledge robust stakeholder commitments to mutual arrangements for implementing reforestation; (3) implement reforestation interventions; and (4) adjust strategy through continuous evaluation of outcomes. We then elucidate how components of these four phases can be operationalized so that, on one side, scientists and practitioners might better understand the dynamic trade‐offs reforestation poses for stakeholders, and on the other, stakeholders might balance their hard choices in ways that promote forest recovery.
A Practical flow white list approach for SCADA systems

The blatant vulnerability of industrial control systems, including those controlling critical infrastructure, is now well known. There is a need for immediately applicable security solutions that do not interfere with normal operations. Intrusion detection through flow white listing is an approach that can detect multiple components of modern attacks such as pivoting and command and control channels. However, the white list approach is not compatible with current black list-based IDS technology. This paper presents a practical approach for implementing flow white listing in SCADA system. The approach extracts a flow white list from a known good packet capture and inverts the decision logic to programmatically generate a rule set that can be consumed by a black list-based IDS. A performance evaluation shows that the approach is viable for SCADA systems, where the number of communication pairs is limited and traffic is mostly deterministic.
Heterogeneity in [18F]Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography of Non–Small Cell Lung Carcinoma and Its Relationship to Metabolic Parameters and Pathologic Staging

To investigate the relationships between tumor heterogeneity, assessed by texture analysis of [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose–positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) images, metabolic parameters, and pathologic staging in patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). A retrospective analysis of 38 patients with histologically confirmed NSCLC who underwent staging FDG-PET/computed tomography was performed. Tumor images were segmented using a standardized uptake value (SUV) cutoff of 2.5. Five textural features, related to the heterogeneity of gray-level distribution, were computed (energy, entropy, contrast, homogeneity, and correlation). Additionally, metabolic parameters such as SUVmax, SUVmean, metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG), as well as pathologic staging, histologic subtype, and tumor diameter, were obtained. Finally, a correlation analysis was carried out. Of 38 tumors, 63.2% were epidermoid and 36.8% were adenocarcinomas. The mean ± standard deviation values of MTV and TLG were 30.47 ± 25.17 mL and 197.81 ± 251.11 g, respectively. There was a positive relationship of all metabolic parameters (SUVmax, SUVmean, MTV, and TLG) with entropy, correlation, and homogeneity and a negative relationship with energy and contrast. The T component of the pathologic TNM staging (pT) was similarly correlated with these textural parameters. Textural features associated with tumor heterogeneity were shown to be related to global metabolic parameters and pathologic staging.
Influence of Corpus Callosum Damage on Cognition and Physical Disability in Multiple Sclerosis: A Multimodal Study

Background Corpus callosum (CC) is a common target for multiple sclerosis (MS) pathology. We investigated the influence of CC damage on physical disability and cognitive dysfunction using a multimodal approach. Methods Twenty-one relapsing-remitting MS patients and 13 healthy controls underwent structural MRI and diffusion tensor of the CC (fractional anisotropy; mean diffusivity, MD; radial diffusivity, RD; axial diffusivity). Interhemisferic transfer of motor inhibition was assessed by recording the ipsilateral silent period (iSP) to transcranial magnetic stimulation. We evaluated cognitive function using the Brief Repeatable Battery and physical disability using the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and the MS Functional Composite (MSFC) z-score. Results The iSP latency correlated with physical disability scores (r ranged from 0.596 to 0.657, P values from 0.004 to 0.001), and with results of visual memory (r = −0.645, P = 0.002), processing speed (r = −0.51, P = 0.018) and executive cognitive domain tests (r = −0.452, P = 0.039). The area of the rostrum correlated with the EDSS (r = −0.442, P = 0.045). MD and RD correlated with cognitive performance, mainly with results of visual and verbal memory tests (r ranged from −0.446 to −0.546, P values from 0.048 to 0.011). The iSP latency correlated with CC area (r = −0.345, P = 0.049), volume (r = −0.401, P = 0.002), MD (r = 0.404, P = 0.002) and RD (r = 0.415, P = 0.016). Conclusions We found evidence for structural and microstructural CC abnormalities associated with impairment of motor callosal inhibitory conduction in MS. CC damage may contribute to cognitive dysfunction and in less extent to physical disability likely through a disconnection mechanism.
Aspects of Born-Infeld theory and string/M-theory

These notes provide a hopefully pedagogic introduction to Born-Infeld theory and some of its uses in String/M-Theory from the perspective of some-one interested in spacetime geometry. Causality and the consequences of having both the open string and closed string metric are stressed. This leads to some new insighst into old problems, such as strings at finite temperature. Various strong coupling limits of both Born-Infeld and the M5-brane theories are described and their relevance for tachyon condensations are mentioned.
Lyα Radiation from Collapsing Protogalaxies. I. Characteristics of the Emergent Spectrum

We present Monte Carlo calculations of Lyα radiative transfer through optically thick, spherically symmetric, collapsing gas clouds. These represent simplified models of protogalaxies in the process of their assembly. Such galaxies produce Lyα flux over an extended solid angle, either from a spatially extended Lyα emissivity, or from scattering effects, or both. We present a detailed study of the effect of the gas distribution and kinematics and of the Lyα emissivity profile on the emergent spectrum and surface brightness distribution. The emergent Lyα spectrum is typically double peaked and asymmetric. In practice, however, we find energy transfer from the infalling gas to the Lyα photons to significantly enhance the blue peak and to render the red peak, in most cases, undetectable. The resulting effective blueshift, combined with scattering in the intergalactic medium, renders extended Lyα emission from collapsing protogalaxies difficult to detect beyond redshift z ≳ 4. We find a strong wavelength dependence of the slope of the surface brightness distribution (with preferential flattening at the red side of the line) to be a robust indication that Lyα photons are being generated (rather than just scattered) in a spatially extended, collapsing region around the galaxy. For self-ionized clouds whose effective Lyα optical depth is ≲103, infall and outflow models can produce nearly identical spectra and surface brightness distributions and are practically indistinguishable. The presence of cosmic abundance of deuterium may produce a detectable dip in the spectra of systems with moderate hydrogen column densities, NH = 1018-1020 cm-2. Finally, we present a new analytic solution for the emerging Lyα spectrum in the limiting case of a static uniform sphere, extending previous solutions for slabs.
Spin‐spin relaxation in experimental allergic Encephalomyelitis. Analysis of CPMG data using a non‐linear least squares method and linear inverse theory

We have used the CPMG pulse sequence to measure proton T2 values and water content in spinal cord and brain samples from Hartley guinea pigs inoculated to produce experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). Relaxation data were fitted using minuit, a non‐linear curve fitting routine. Three exponentials provided the best fit to spinal cord data (10 ms (13%), 76 ms (57%), 215 ms (30%)) and two exponentials for brain tissue (10 ms (4%), 92 ms (96%)). Least squares algorithms were also used to analyse the spinal cord data in terms of discrete and smooth distributions of relaxation times. The discrete least squares solutions consisted of three to five isolated spikes between 0.010 and 0.300 s. This type of solution was difficult to interpret in terms of water reservoirs. Smooth solutions consisted of two broad peaks, a small peak with a T2 near 0.010 s and a larger peak near 0.100 s. The integral ratio of the larger to the smaller peak was 7.092 ± 1.782 for normal tissue, and increased to a maximum of 16 with increasing parenchymal cellular infiltration and demyelination. The short T2 peak has been assigned to water in the hydration layers of the myelin sheath. The width of the longer T2 peak was sensitive to tissue heterogeneity. The least squares and smooth distribution analysis models could be used to distinguish samples with extensive parenchymal infiltration from normal tissue, even though only a maximum of 60% of the tissue was affected. The short T2 component could provide a direct method of measuring intact myelin, which would have a profound effect on the understanding of the evolution of pathology in multiple sclerosis.
Maintenance Expressions for Views with Aggregation

Materialized views, especially views involving aggregation, are often used in environments such as data warehouses to speed up the evaluation of complex queries. Because the views can be quite complex, as changes are made to the underlying base data it is usually better to incrementally maintain a view by propagating changes to base data onto the view than to recompute the view from scratch. Griffn and Libkin [GL95] provide a framework for deriving incremental view maintenance expressions for a view with duplicate semantics, where the view can be defined using any number of select, project, join, bag union, and monus bag-algebra operators. However, aggregation was considered only in a limited sense; for example, aggregation with groupby attributes was not allowed. We extend the framework of [GL95] to include maintaining views with aggregation in the general case, where aggregation can include groupby attributes and a view can include several aggregate operators