Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of glistenings on the optical quality of acrylic foldable intraocular lens

AIMS To assess the influence of glistenings on the optical quality of acrylic foldable intraocular lens. METHODS Several degrees of glistenings in the optic were experimentally created by immersing the lens in water at 37°C for 48 hours and then at 25°C for 24 hours. Optical bench tests were carried out in water including measurements of spectral transmittance with the spectrophotometer, intensity of forward scattering using the integrating sphere photometer, modulation transfer function, and resolving power at various contrasts with and without the veiling glare light source. RESULTS Glistenings of 1+ to 4+ degrees were created, among which the 4+ glistenings seemed to be extremely intense and thought to be beyond the range of clinical settings. Clinically feasible level of glistenings, up to 3+, did not adversely influence spectral transmittance, scattering, modulation transfer function, and resolving power at various contrasts. The 4+ glistenings caused mild to moderate deteriorations of the optical quality of the lens. CONCLUSION The optical quality of the acrylic foldable intraocular lens is not significantly affected by the level of glistenings usually seen in the clinical setting.
What Shall I Write Next?: Subliminal and Supraliminal Priming as Triggers for Creative Writing

Creative writing requires the manipulation of language in demanding ways, as individuals attempt to uniquely express themselves. As a result, during creative writing people often experience the writer's block: a stress reaction that affects their ability to write. Addressing this problem, creativity support tools have been incorporating story prompts to instigate the creative process. However, such strategies distract the user from the writing task and impose cognitive load to get over the block. In this paper, we investigate subliminal priming as a novel technique to support creative writing. We developed a text-editor that provides conscious and unconscious textual hints during a writing task and explored its impact on user's self-experienced creativity. Results showed that participants in the subliminal condition experienced more loss of self-consciousness when compared to the control condition. Self-report data revealed higher loss of self-consciousness in the subliminal condition while the analysis of eye-tracking data and verbal-accounts revealed a stronger influence on people's thoughts during the supraliminal condition. We report our findings and conclude with insights for future research.
An Economic Vulnerability Index: Its Design and Use for International Development Policy

In response to a need expressed by the UN General Assembly, an Economic Vulnerability index (EVI) has been defined by the Committee for Development Policy. The present paper, which refers to this index, first examines how a structural EVI can be designed for low-income countries in particular. It recapitulates the conceptual and empirical grounds of the index, considers the structure of the present EVI, its sensitivity to methodological choices with respect to averaging, as well as possible improvements in this regard, and briefly compares the levels and trends of EVI in various country groups, using a new database from a “retrospective EVI”. The paper examines how the EVI can be used for international development policy, underlining two main purposes. The first—the purpose for which the EVI was initially designed—is the identification of the least-developed countries (LDCs) that are eligible to receive some preferential treatment in aid and trade matters. The EVI, in addition to income per capita and human capital, is one of three complementary criteria a country needs to meet in order to be designated as an LDC, and consequently it cannot be the sole criterion for countries wishing to avoid graduating from the LDC list. Second, the EVI can be used, in addition to other traditional measures, as a criterion for aid allocation between developing countries. It is argued that such an inclusion is legitimate for reasons of both effectiveness and equity. The two purposes are presented as complementary.
Which measures of cigarette dependence are predictors of smoking cessation during pregnancy? Analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial

Abstract Aims To examine the ability of different common measures of cigarette dependence to predict smoking cessation during pregnancy. Design Secondary analysis of data from a parallel‐group randomized controlled trial of physical activity for smoking cessation. The outcomes were biochemically validated smoking abstinence at 4 weeks post‐quit and end‐of‐pregnancy. Setting Women identified as smokers in antenatal clinics in 13 hospital trusts predominantly in southern England, who were recruited to a smoking cessation trial. Participants Of 789 pregnant smokers recruited, 784 were included in the analysis. Measurements Using random‐effect logistic regression models, we analysed the effects of baseline measures of cigarette dependence, including numbers of cigarettes smoked daily, Fagerström Test of Cigarette Dependence (FTCD) score, the two FTCD subscales of Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI) and non‐Heaviness of Smoking Index (non‐HSI), expired carbon monoxide (CO) level and urges to smoke (strength and frequency) on smoking cessation. Associations were adjusted for significant socio‐demographic/health behaviour predictors and trial variables, and area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine the predictive ability of the model for each measure of dependence. Findings All the dependence variables predicted abstinence at 4 weeks and end‐of‐pregnancy. At 4 weeks, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval) for a unit standard deviation increase in FTCD was 0.59 (0.47–0.74), expired CO = 0.54 (0.41–0.71), number of cigarettes smoked per day 0.65 (0.51–0.84) and frequency of urges to smoke 0.79 (0.63–0.98); at end‐of‐pregnancy they were: 0.60 (0.45–0.81), 0.55 (0.37–0.80), 0.70 (0.49–0.98) and 0.69 (0.51–0.94), respectively. HSI and non‐HSI exhibited similar results to the full FTCD. Conclusions Four common measures of dependence, including number of cigarettes smoked per day, scores for Fagerström Test of Cigarette Dependence and frequency of urges and level of expired CO, all predicted smoking abstinence in the short term during pregnancy and at end‐of‐pregnancy with very similar predictive validity.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio, Cardiovascular Outcomes, and Death in Peritoneal Dialysis Patients

Objectives. The primary objective of this study was to determine the relationship between waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), cardiovascular (CV) events, and mortality in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. A secondary objective was to investigate the association between abdominal obesity and systemic inflammatory markers. Methods. This is a prospective study of 22 prevalent PD patients. WHR was measured at baseline. C-reactive protein (CRP), tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) were measured. Main outcomes were first CV event and death from all causes. Survival analysis was used to examine the relationship between anthropomorphic measures and clinical outcomes. Results. Mean follow-up period was 3.1 years. In Kaplan-Meier analysis, survival was lower in those with higher WHR (P = .002). In Cox regression, WHR independently predicted mortality and first CV event after adjustment for known ischemic heart disease (hazard ratio [HR] 1.17, confidence interval [CI] 1.05–1.30 for death; HR 1.13, CI 1.01–1.26 for CV event). WHR correlated with serum TNF-α (r = 0.45; P = .05). Conclusion. The results of this study suggest WHR may be a risk factor for increased CV events and mortality in PD patients. Abdominal obesity is also associated with inflammatory markers. Larger studies are warranted to confirm these findings.
Kinematics and wing shape across flight speed in the bat, Leptonycteris yerbabuenae

Summary The morphology and kinematics of a flying animal determines the resulting aerodynamic lift through the regulation of the speed of the air moving across the wing, the wing area and the lift coefficient. We studied the detailed three-dimensional wingbeat kinematics of the bat, Leptonycteris yerbabuenae, flying in a wind tunnel over a range of flight speeds (0–7 m/s), to determine how factors affecting the lift production vary across flight speed and within wingbeats. We found that the wing area, the angle of attack and the camber, which are determinants of the lift production, decreased with increasing speed. The camber is controlled by multiple mechanisms along the span, including the deflection of the leg relative to the body, the bending of the fifth digit, the deflection of the leading edge flap and the upward bending of the wing tip. All these measures vary throughout the wing beat suggesting active or aeroelastic control. The downstroke Strouhal number, Std, is kept relatively constant, suggesting that favorable flow characteristics are maintained during the downstroke, across the range of speeds studied. The Std is kept constant through changes in the stroke plane, from a strongly inclined stroke plane at low speeds to a more vertical stroke plane at high speeds. The mean angular velocity of the wing correlates with the aerodynamic performance and shows a minimum at the speed of maximum lift to drag ratio, suggesting a simple way to determine the optimal speed from kinematics alone. Taken together our results show the high degree of adjustments that the bats employ to fine tune the aerodynamics of the wings and the correlation between kinematics and aerodynamic performance.
Forces in Single Point and Two Point Incremental Forming

Forces have been measured in Two Point Incremental Forming and Single Point Incremental Forming of Sheet Metal. It is necessary to know the magnitude of these forces when trying to determine if the equipment available is capable of Forming Sheet Metal by either one of the two foregoing processes. The magnitude of forces is also needed when developing appropriate models for the Incremental Sheet Forming. The forces measured in forming cones and truncated pyramids from AA 3003-0 are described.
Relationship between body mass index, age and upper airway measurements in snorers and sleep apnoea patients.

Anatomical pharyngeal and craniofacial abnormalities have been reported using upper airway imaging in snorers with or without obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). However, the influences of the age and weight of the patient on these abnormalities remain to be established. The aim of this study was, therefore, to evaluate in a large population of snorers with or without OSA, the relationship between body mass index (BMI), age and upper airway morphology. One hundred and forty patients were referred for assessment of a possible sleep-related breathing disorder and had complete polysomnography, cephalometry and upper airway computed tomography. For the whole population, OSA patients had more upper airway abnormalities than snorers. When subdivided for BMI and age, however, only lean or younger OSA patients were significantly different from snorers as regards their upper airway anatomy. The shape of the oropharynx and hypopharynx changed significantly with BMI both in OSA patients and snorers, being more spherical in the highest BMI group due mainly to a decrease in the transverse axis. On the other hand, older patients (> 63 yrs), whether snorers or apnoeics, had larger upper airways at all pharyngeal levels than the youngest group of patients (< 52 yrs). For the total group of patients, upper airway variables explained 26% of the variance in apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI), whereas in lean (BMI < 27 kg.m-2) or youngest (age < 52 yrs) subjects upper airway variables explained, respectively 69 and 55% of the variance in AHI. In conclusion, in lean or young subjects, upper airway abnormalities explain a major part of the variance in apnoea/hypopnoea index and are likely to play an important physiopathogenic role. This study also suggests that the shape of the pharyngeal lumen in awake subjects is more dependent on body mass index than on the presence of obstructive sleep apnoea. Further investigation looking at upper airway imaging for surgical selection in obstructive sleep apnoea should focus on lean and young patients.
Development and preliminary evaluation of a caregiver's manual for robot therapy using the therapeutic seal robot Paro

Robot therapy is expected to have psychological, physiological and social effects similar to animal therapy. The use of a therapeutic seal robot, Paro, in various facilities for the elderly is spreading around the world. However, caregivers use Paro freely, and the ways in which they use Paro differ among them. Therefore, the effects are influenced by their skills. A manual that shows effective ways to use Paro is needed. In this paper, such a manual that shows effective methods for robot therapy is developed and its effectiveness is evaluated in a preliminary study with one caregiver and two patients.
Biomarkers of age effect on renal function in Down syndrome

Objective: To assess differences in kidney function between Down syndrome (DS) individuals and a control group related to aging. Methods: Creatinine (Cr) and specific gravity (SG) were assessed by spectrophotometric and refractometric assays in urine samples of 103 individuals with DS and 82 age-matched controls. Results: Significantly lower levels of Cr and SG were found in DS after puberty. Significant correlations were found between SG and age as well as between Cr and SG in DS and controls (p ≤ 0.05). Conclusions: Premature aging in kidneys of DS patients could lead to an impaired renal function.
Relations between the statistics of natural images and the response properties of cortical cells.

The relative efficiency of any particular image-coding scheme should be defined only in relation to the class of images that the code is likely to encounter. To understand the representation of images by the mammalian visual system, it might therefore be useful to consider the statistics of images from the natural environment (i.e., images with trees, rocks, bushes, etc). In this study, various coding schemes are compared in relation to how they represent the information in such natural images. The coefficients of such codes are represented by arrays of mechanisms that respond to local regions of space, spatial frequency, and orientation (Gabor-like transforms). For many classes of image, such codes will not be an efficient means of representing information. However, the results obtained with six natural images suggest that the orientation and the spatial-frequency tuning of mammalian simple cells are well suited for coding the information in such images if the goal of the code is to convert higher-order redundancy (e.g., correlation between the intensities of neighboring pixels) into first-order redundancy (i.e., the response distribution of the coefficients). Such coding produces a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio and permits information to be transmitted with only a subset of the total number of cells. These results support Barlow's theory that the goal of natural vision is to represent the information in the natural environment with minimal redundancy.
A Short Survey on Taxonomy Learning from Text Corpora: Issues, Resources and Recent Advances

A taxonomy is a semantic hierarchy, consisting of concepts linked by is-a relations. While a large number of taxonomies have been constructed from human-compiled resources (e.g., Wikipedia), learning taxonomies from text corpora has received a growing interest and is essential for long-tailed and domain-specific knowledge acquisition. In this paper, we overview recent advances on taxonomy construction from free texts, reorganizing relevant subtasks into a complete framework. We also overview resources for evaluation and discuss challenges for future research.
INCREMENTAL CONCEPT FORMATION ALGORITHMS BASED ON GALOIS (CONCEPT) LATTICES

The Galois (or concept) lattice produced from a binary relation has proved useful for many applications. Building the Galois lattice can be considered a conceptual clustering method because it results in a concept hierarchy. This article presents incremental algorithms for updating the Galois lattice and corresponding graph, resulting in an incremental concept formation method. Different strategies are considered based on a characterization of the modifications implied by such an update. Results of empirical tests are given in order to compare the performance of the incremental algorithms to three other batch algorithms. Surprisingly, when the total time for incremental generation is used, the simplest and less efficient variant of the incremental algorithms outperforms the batch algorithms in most cases. When only the incremental update time is used, the incremental algorithm outperforms all the batch algorithms. Empirical evidence shows that, on the average, the incremental update is done in time proportional to the number of instances previously treated. Although the worst case is exponential, when there is a fixed upper bound on the number of features related to an instance, which is usually the case in practical applications, the worst‐case analysis of the algorithm also shows linear growth with respect to the number of instances.
Design and Open-Loop Control of the ParkourBot, a Dynamic Climbing Robot

The ParkourBot climbs in a planar reduced-gravity vertical chute by leaping back and forth between the chute's two parallel walls. The ParkourBot is comprised of a body with two springy legs and its controls consist of leg angles at touchdown and the energy stored in them. During flight, the robot stores elastic potential energy in its springy legs and then converts this potential energy in to kinetic energy at touchdown, when it “kicks off” a wall. This paper describes the ParkourBot's mechanical design, modeling, and open-loop climbing experiments. The mechanical design makes use of the BowLeg, previously used for hopping on a flat ground. We introduce two models of the BowLeg ParkourBot: one is based on a nonzero stance duration using the spring-loaded inverted pendulum model, and the other is a simplified model (the simplest parkour model, or SPM) obtained as the leg stiffness approaches infinity and the stance time approaches zero. The SPM approximation provides the advantage of closed-form calculations. Finally, predictions of the models are validated by experiments in open-loop climbing in a reduced-gravity planar environment provided by an air table.
Reconstructing Antibody Repertoires from Error-Prone Immunosequencing Datasets.

Transforming error-prone immunosequencing datasets into antibody repertoires is a fundamental problem in immunogenomics, and a prerequisite for studies of immune responses. Although various repertoire reconstruction algorithms were released in the last three years, it remains unclear how to benchmark them and how to assess the accuracy of the reconstructed repertoires. We describe a novel IgReC algorithm for constructing antibody repertoires from high-throughput immunosequencing datasets and a new framework for assessing the quality of reconstructed repertoires. Benchmarking IgReC against the existing antibody repertoire reconstruction tools has demonstrated that it results in highly accurate repertoire reconstructions. Surprisingly, antibody repertoires constructed by IgReC from barcoded immunosequencing datasets in blind mode (without using unique molecular identifiers information) improved upon the repertoires constructed by the state-of-the-art tools that use barcoding. This finding suggests that IgReC may alleviate the need to generate repertoires using the barcoding technology (the workhorse of current immunogenomics efforts) because our computational approach to error correction of immunosequencing data ends up being nearly as powerful as the experimental approach based on barcoding.
Non‐Darcian Airflow through Ceramic Foams

This paper presents the first results on fluid flow through (laboratory-made) ceramic foams. Pressure drop (ΔP) vs airflow rate (U) measurements show that Darcy's law does not hold and that the non-Darcian airflow through the foams satisfies an equation of the form ΔP =aU+bU2. A permeability quotient is defined, which appears to be a qualitative measure for the average pore size of a foam. A Reynolds number defined in terms of this quotient can be used to estimate the Darcian flow range for a certain fluid.
Three-dimensional alpha shapes

Frequently, data in scientific computing is in its abstract form a finite point set in space, and it is sometimes useful or required to compute what one might call the “shape” of the set. For that purpose, this article introduces the formal notion of the family of α-shapes of a finite point set in R<supscrpt>3</supscrpt>. Each shape is a well-defined polytope, derived from the Delaunay triangulation of the point set, with a parameter α ε R controlling the desired level of detail. An algorithm is presented that constructs the entire family of shapes for a given set of size <italic>n</italic> in time <italic>0(n<supscrpt>2</supscrpt>)</italic>, worst case. A robust implementation of the algorithm is discussed, and several applications in the area of scientific computing are mentioned.
Asymptotic performance of distributed detection over random networks

We show that distributed detection over random networks, or using a random protocol, e.g., of the gossip type, is asymptotically optimal, if the rate of information flow across the random network is large enough. Asymptotic optimality is in the sense of Chernoff information; in other words, we determine when the exponential rate of decay of the error probability for distributed detection is the best possible and equal to the rate of decay of the best centralized detector. The rate of information flow is defined by |log r|, where r is the second largest eigenvalue of the second moment of the random, consensus weight matrix. We quantify interesting tradeoffs in distributed detection, between the rate of information flow and the achievable detection performance.
Apigenin Blocks Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Lethality In Vivo and Proinflammatory Cytokines Expression by Inactivating NF-κB through the Suppression of p65 Phosphorylation

LPS stimulates monocytes/macrophages through the activation of signaling events that modulate the production of inflammatory cytokines. Apigenin, a flavonoid abundantly found in fruits and vegetables, exhibits anti-proliferative and anti-inflammatory activities through poorly defined mechanisms. In this study, we demonstrate that apigenin inhibits the production of proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-8, and TNF in LPS-stimulated human monocytes and mouse macrophages. The inhibitory effect on proinflammatory cytokine production persists even when apigenin is administered after LPS stimulation. Transient transfection experiments using NF-κB reporter constructs indicated that apigenin inhibits the transcriptional activity of NF-κB in LPS-stimulated mouse macrophages. The classical proteasome-dependent degradation of the NF-κB inhibitor IκBα was observed in apigenin LPS-stimulated human monocytes. Using EMSA, we found that apigenin does not alter NF-κB-DNA binding activity in human monocytes. Instead we show that apigenin, as part of a non-canonical pathway, regulates NF-κB activity through hypophosphorylation of Ser536 in the p65 subunit and the inactivation of the IKK complex stimulated by LPS. The decreased phosphorylation on Ser536 observed in LPS-stimulated mouse macrophages treated with apigenin was overcome by the over-expression of IKKβ. In addition, our studies indicate that apigenin inhibits in vivo LPS-induced TNF and the mortality induced by lethal doses of LPS. Collectively, these findings suggest a molecular mechanism by which apigenin suppresses inflammation and modulates the immune response in vivo.