Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibiotic therapy and Clostridium difficile infection – primum non nocere – first do no harm

License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress. com/permissions.php Infection and Drug Resistance 2015:8 333–337 Infection and Drug Resistance Dovepress
An improved real-time method for counting people in crowded scenes based on a statistical approach

In this paper, we present a real-time method for counting people in crowded conditions using an indirect/statistical approach. Our method is based on an algorithm by Albiol et al. that won the PETS 2009 contest on people counting. We employ a scale-invariant interest point detector from the state of the art coined SURF (Speeded-Up Robust Features), and we exploit motion information to retain only interest points belonging to moving people. Direct proportionality is then assumed between the number of remaining SURF points and the number of people. Our technique was first tested on three video sequences from the PETS dataset. Results showed an improvement over Albiol's in all the three cases. It was then tested on our set of video sequences taken under various conditions. Despite the complexity of the scenes, results were very reasonable with a mean relative error ranging from 9.36% to 17.06% and a mean absolute error ranging from 1.13 to 3.33. Testing this method on a new dataset proved its speed and accuracy under many shooting scenarios, especially in crowded conditions where the averaging process reduces the variations in the number of detected SURF points per person.
Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

As Washington and Tokyo continue to clarify their relationship and roles, Japan continues to block the access of foreign professionals, Westerners and Asians alike. These market barriers serve neither the professed goals of Japan nor those of the United States. Despite repeated promises to open up, Japanese legal, media, academic and research organizations run an intellectual closed shop. Western lawyers are stymied in efforts to help firms enter the Japanese market. Foreign correspondants are systematically walled off from the most important resources. Resident Asian academics in search of stable and productive careers and education find the roads blocked. Non-Japanese scientists and engineers are kept out of state-of-the-art laboratories. Japan aspires to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a larger political voice, but its intellectual parsimony is simply not worthy of a world economic power, argues Ivan Hall. This book looks into the causes of these cultural and institutional barriers and examines ineffective past attempts to challenge them.
Recognising Emotional Evolution from Speech

In an interaction, it is well known that information is being exchanged which is meaningful beyond the pure context. Especially, intentional and emotional characteristics are essential to improve not only the relationship in a human-human interaction, but also to provide benefits to increase the understanding of the transmitted information. For technical systems it is favourable to detect and interpret these additional characteristics and to transfer appropriate knowledge to human-machine interactions. In particular, this enables an automatic recognition of emotions. In this paper, we focus on speech as the transmitting modality. Beyond the detection of the location and nature of emotional instances, automatic interpretation asks "if", "how", and "when" emotions change in an interaction. In the EmoGest corpus, providing human-human interactions with emotionally induced subjects, we analyse the subject's emotional evolution. For this, we investigate the utterances spoken at the beginning and at the end of particular sessions. Automatic emotion recognition from speech shows that in intra- and inter-individual evaluations, significant differences (at least p<0.05) in the emotional state train of the subjects can be detected. Intra-individual experiments indicate a trend towards less affective states in subsequent interactions if no further inducement is given. In addition, the inter-individual analyses show that a kind of alignment can be seen in the emotional state trains of the single subjects even if their sessions were strictly separated.
Parasite fauna of Golden Grey Mullet Liza aurata (Risso, 1810) collected from Lower Kızılırmak Delta in Samsun, Turkey

SummaryThe mugilids are among the most cosmopolitan teleost fishes and they are widely distributed in fresh, brackish and coastal marine waters of the tropical and temperate regions of the world. Liza aurata is one of eight mugilid species survive in Turkish waters. Parasite fauna of the golden grey mullet Liza aurata (Risso, 1810) collected from Lower Kızılırmak Delta in Samsun, Turkey were investigated in the present study. Standard parasitological investigation methods were applied and standard indices of infection were calculated. A total of 10 parasite species were identified and they are; Trichodina puytoraci, Trichodina lepsii, Ligophorus mediterraneus, Ligophorus cephali, Microcotyle mugilis, Ascocotyle (Phagicola) longa, Haplosplanchnus pachysomus, Tylodelphys clavata, Neoechinorhyncus agilis and Ergasilus lizae. Overall infection prevalence was 100 % and both the mean intensity and abundance values were 190.09 ± 43.15 parasites per infected/examined fish. Ligophorus-group parasites were the most abundant (97.83 %) and Tylodelphys clavata was the least (4.35 %) among all parasite species identified. Water temperature (C), dissolved oxygen (mg/lt), salinity (ppt) and nitrate (mg/lt) values were also presented. According to results obtained in the present study, Ligophorus cephali, Ligophorus mediterraneus, Thylodelphys clavata and Ascocotyle (Phagicola) longa are new parasite records for L. aurata and Ligophorus mediterraneus, Ligophorus cephali and Ergasilus lizae are the new parasite records for Turkish parasite fauna of fish in Turkey.
Did the Arctic ice recover? Demographics of true and false climate facts

AbstractBeliefs about climate change divide the U.S. public along party lines more distinctly than hot social issues. Research finds that better-educated or informed respondents are more likely to align with their parties on climate change. This information–elite polarization resembles a process of biased assimilation first described in psychological experiments. In nonexperimental settings, college graduates could be prone to biased assimilation if they more effectively acquire information that supports their beliefs. Recent national and statewide survey data show response patterns consistent with biased assimilation (and biased guessing) contributing to the correlation observed between climate beliefs and knowledge. The survey knowledge questions involve key, uncontroversial observations such as whether the area of late-summer Arctic sea ice has declined, increased, or declined and then recovered to what it was 30 years ago. Correct answers are predicted by education, and some wrong answers (e.g., more .
Blind and semi-blind channel identification methods using second order statistics for OFDM systems

Two new blind channel identification methods suited to multicarrier system (OFDM) exploiting the redundancy introduced by the adjunction of a cyclic prefix at the emitter and relying on the evaluation of the received signal autocorrelation matrix are presented. The proposed algorithms are able to identify any channel without any constraint on their zeroes location (including non-minimum phase channels) and are robust to the addition of white noise. Moreover a further enhancement of the estimation accuracy can easily be achieved by taking advantage of already present training symbols in current systems operating in a semi-blind context. Furthermore one of the two identification strategies has a very low arithmetical complexity which makes it particularly attractive in practice. Notice that these methods are not restricted to classical DFT-type modulators and still apply with any perfect reconstruction modulator.
Issue Environments and Institutionalization: Structural Change in U.S. State Judicial Institutions, 1975–1995

In this article, I propose a new framework for analyzing institutional change in state judicial institutions. I suggest that judicial reformers act as issue entrepreneurs in reform campaigns that are constrained by an issue environment in the respective states. These issue environments are characterized by different degrees of elite motivation, issue momentum, and potential for public attention. I present an analysis of data, testing various hypotheses suggested by this perspective as a tool for describing the structural consolidation of state court systems from 1975 to 1995. The findings generally support the hypotheses. I conclude with some suggestions for further research.
A study on the relationships between age, work experience, cognition, and work ability in older employees working in heavy industry

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation of age, work experience, cognition, and work ability in older employees working in heavy industry. [Subjects and Methods] The study was conducted using 100 subjects who were over 55 years old and worked in heavy industry. To obtain data, we first had the subjects complete the MoCA-K test and Work Ability Index (WAI). The data were then analyzed by frequency and correlation using statistical software (SPSS 21.0). [Results] Through this study, we discovered a significant positive correlation between WAI and MoCA-K, age, and work experience. [Conclusion] This study revealed that work ability in older employees increases not with the number of years worked but with the enhancement of cognitive ability. Special management that focuses on cognition is therefore required for senior employees working in the field of heavy industry.
Malabaricone-A Induces A Redox Imbalance That Mediates Apoptosis in U937 Cell Line

Background The ‘two-faced’ character of reactive oxygen species (ROS) plays an important role in cancer biology by acting both as secondary messengers in intracellular signaling cascades and sustaining the oncogenic phenotype of cancer cells, while on the other hand, it triggers an oxidative assault that causes a redox imbalance translating into an apoptotic cell death. Principal Findings Using a tetrazolium [{3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl}-2H-tetrazolium] based cell viability assay, we evaluated the cytotoxicity of a plant derived diarylnonanoid, malabaricone-A on leukemic cell lines U937 and MOLT-3. This cytotoxicity hinged on its ability to cause a redox imbalance via its ability to increase ROS, measured by flow cytometry using 5-(and-6)-chloromethyl-2′,7′-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate and by decreasing glutathione peroxidase activity. This redox imbalance mediated apoptosis was evident by an increase in cytosolic [Ca2+], externalization of phosphatidyl serine as also depolarization of the mitochondrial membrane potential as measured by flow cytometry. There was concomitant peroxidation of cardiolipin, release of free cytochrome c to cytosol along with activation of caspases 9, 8 and 3. This led to cleavage of the DNA repair enzyme, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase that caused DNA damage as proved by labeling with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI); furthermore, terminal deoxy ribonucleotide transferase catalysed incorporation of deoxy uridine triphosphate confirmed DNA nicking and was accompanied by arrest of cell cycle progression. Conclusions Taken together, compounds like MAL-A having pro-oxidant activity mediate their cytotoxicity in leukemic cells via induction of oxidative stress triggering a caspase dependent apoptosis.
A PVDF Receiver for Ultrasound Monitoring of Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Therapy

Focused ultrasound (FUS) shows great promise for use in the area of transcranial therapy. Currently dependent on MRI for monitoring, transcranial FUS would benefit from a real-time technique to monitor acoustic emissions during therapy. A polyvinylidene fluoride receiver with an active area of 17.8 mm2 and a film thickness of 110 μm was constructed. A compact preamplifier was designed to fit within the receiver to improve the receiver SNR and allow the long transmission line needed to remove the receiver electronics outside of the MRI room. The receiver was compared with a 0.5 mm commercial needle hydrophone and focused and unfocused piezoceramics. The receiver was found to have a higher sensitivity than the needle hydrophone, a more wideband response than the piezoceramic, and sufficient threshold for detection of microbubble emissions. Sonication of microbubbles directly and through a fragment of human skull demonstrated the ability of the receiver to detect harmonic bubble emissions, and showed potential for use in a larger scale array. Monitoring of disruption of the blood-brain barrier in rats showed functionality in vivo and the ability to detect subharmonic, harmonic, and wideband emissions during therapy. The receiver shows potential for monitoring acoustic emissions during treatments and providing additional parameters to assist treatment planning. Future work will focus on developing a multi-element array for transcranial treatment monitoring.
Learning to Play Othello with N-Tuple Systems

This paper investigates the use of n-tuple systems as position value functions for the game of Othello. The architecture is described, and then evaluated for use with temporal difference learning. Performance is compared with previously de-veloped weighted piece counters and multi-layer perceptrons. The n-tuple system is able to defeat the best performing of these after just five hundred games of self-play learning. The conclusion is that n-tuple networks learn faster and better than the other more conventional approaches.
Loughborough University Institutional Repository A hybrid approach to determining cornea mechanical properties in vivo using a combination of nano-indentation and inverse nite element analysis

A hybrid approach to determining cornea mechanical properties in vivo using a combination of nano-indentation and inverse nite element analysis This item was submitted to Loughborough University's Institutional Repository by the/an author. A hybrid approach to determining cornea mechanical properties in vivo using a combination of nano-indentation and inverse nite element analysis. A hybrid approach to determining cornea mechanical properties in vivo using a combination of nano-indentation and inverse finite element analysis Abstract An analysis of the material properties of porcine corneas has been performed. A simple stress relaxation test was performed to determine the viscoelastic properties and a rheological model was built based on the Generalized Maxwell (GM) approach. A validation experiment using nano-indentation showed that an isotropic GM model was insufficient for describing the corneal material behaviour when exposed to a complex stress state. A new technique was proposed for determining the properties, using a combination of nano-indentation experiment, an isotropic and orthotropic GM model and inverse finite element method. The good agreement using this method suggests that this is a promising technique for measuring material properties in vivo and further work should focus on the reliability of the approach in practice. Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials 3 Graphical abstract Highlights 1-A new technique was proposed for determining the properties, using a combination of nano-indentation, an isotropic and orthotropic GM model and inverse finite element method 2-This approach enables determination of all the viscoelastic parameters for a cornea 3-To investigate the performance of the inverse method, the recovered parameters were checked against the fitted parameters from the stress relaxation experiment.
Land Trusts Policy: Is It Socially Optimal?

The impressive growth in land conservation by the private sector, primarily by land trusts, has resulted from a number of policies that subsidize such activity. These include federal income and estate tax benefits, and state income and property tax benefits. We model the equilibrium in the private land conservation market and the social welfare maximization problem of the government. We estimate the supply of conservation easements in the San Francisco Bay Area counties. Our results show that conservation easements are own price inelastic, but nevertheless are sensitive to the opportunity cost of land. For a simultaneous equation model, the spillover effect of easements on the value of other properties is found to be positive and significant. A possible equity implication is the barriers to entry facing low-income individuals in the housing market.
Effect of Planting Density on Knot Attributes and Branch Occlusion of Betula alnoides under Natural Pruning in Southern China

Knot-related defects are the major cause of timber quality degradation, and diminishing this kind of defects is an important issue in forest management. For the purpose of clear-wood production, knot attributes and branch occlusion of Betula alnoides under natural pruning were investigated in a 14-year-old experimental plantation with five planting densities ranging from 500 to 3333 stems per hectare in southern China, and a total of 1325 occluded branches from 30 trees were sampled and dissected. The mean occluded branch diameter (OBD), radius of knots and branch insertion angle (IA) decreased significantly with increasing planting density. Planting with high stocking density significantly reduced the frequency of thick occluded branches (diameter ≥ 20 mm) while increasing the frequency of small ones (diameter < 10 mm). Branch occlusion time (OT) also tended to increase with decreasing planting density. The results of generalized linear mixed models showed that OBD was the major factor influencing OT, radius of dead portion of knot (RDP), total radius of knot (TRK) and IA. In addition, OT was positively correlated with RDP but negatively correlated with stem diameter growth rate during branch occlusion (SDGR). Silvicultural strategies with appropriate planting density for large-diameter clear-wood production of B. alnoides were discussed.
A new three phase multilevel inverter with reduced number of switching power devices with Common Mode Voltage elimination

This manuscript proposes a new topology for a 3-φ, multilevel inverter (MLI) with Common Mode Voltage (CMV) elimination. The presented MLI structure is realized with fewer switching power devices compared to the conventional MLI solutions for CMV elimination. A carrier based space vector modulation technique is used to operate the presented MLI. Reduced number of power semiconductors has the advantages of less number of driver circuits, reduced installation space and low cost. Further, owing to the elimination of CMV, the proposed MLI configuration is free from issues like EMI and leakage current. Proposed topology is compared with other topologies to prove its superiority. Simulation results are presented to reconfirm the potential of the proposed MLI.
Risk Perception of HIV/AIDS and Low Self-Control Trait: Explaining Preventative Behaviors Among Iranian University Students

Background: In spite of developed countries there are progressive trend about HIV/AIDS and its’ aspects of transmission in the low socio-economic societies. The aim of this was to explain the youth's behavior in adopting HIV/AIDS related preventive behaviors in a sample of Iranian university students by emphasizing on fear appeals approaches alongside examining the role of self-control trait for explaining adoption on danger or fear control processes based on Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM). Methods: A sample of 156 randomly selected university students in Jolfa, Iran was recruited in a predictive cross-sectional study by application of a researcher-designed questionnaire through self-report data collection manner. Sexual high risk behaviors, the EPPM variables, self-control trait, and general self-efficacy were measured as theoretical framework. Results: Findings indicated that 31.3% of participants were in the fear control process versus 68.7% in danger control about HIV/AIDS and also the presence of multi-sex partners and amphetamine consumption amongst the participants. Low self-control trait and low perceived susceptibility significantly were related to having a history of multi-sex partners while high level of self-efficacy significantly increased the probability of condom use. Conclusion: Findings of the study were indicative of the protective role of high level of self-control, perceived susceptibility and self-efficacy factors on youth's high-risk behaviors and their preventative skills as well.
How Tax Credits Have Affected the Rehabilitation of the Boston Office Market

This paper is concerned with the extent to which rehabilitation tax credits affect the conditional probability of commercial real estate rehabilitation. The analysis suggests that rehabilitation tax credits have been a significant determinant of the conditional probability of rehabilitation in the Boston office market. A significant portion of rehabilitation tax credit investment is investment that would have been invested elsewhere, about 60% to 65% in certain periods, but rising to as high as 90% in other periods. The findings indicate that the rehabilitation tax credit has a significant and substantial influence on the conditional probability of rehabilitation. The findings also reveal that the greatest amount of slippage, not too surprisingly, generally occurs when the tax credit is low and when the gain from rehabilitation before the tax credit is high.
Graph Signal Processing for Scene Representation and Analysis

Graph signal processing (GSP) is an emerging ﬁeld that provides a new family of tools for analyzing signals that could be modeled on vertices connected by edges. In this paper, we describe two examples of how GSP is being applied for scene representation and analysis, where the scene is either captured as video sequences or point clouds. In the ﬁrst example, we show that novel graph constructions can be used to robustly segment moving foreground objects from the background of video sequences with ego-motions. In the second example, we employ a graph-based transform to eﬃciently code attributes associated with the point clouds. We demonstrate with the two examples the potential beneﬁts of using GSP tools for scene representation and analysis