Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Energy-efficient wireless sensors: fewer bits, Moore MEMS

Adoption of wireless sensor network (WSN) technology could enable improved efficiency across a variety of industries that include building management, agriculture, transportation, and health care. Most of the technical challenges of WSNs can be linked to the stringent energy constraints of each sensor node, where wireless communication and leakage energy are the doninant components of active and idle energy costs. To address these two limitations, this thesis adopts compressed sensing (CS) theory as a generic source coding framework to minimize the transmitted data and proposes the use of micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) relay technology to eliminate the idle leakage. To assess the practicality of adopting CS as a source coding framework we examine the inpact of finite resources, input noise, and wireless channel impairments on the compression and reconstruction performance of CS. We show that CS, despite being a lossy compression algorithm, can realize compression factors greater than loX with no loss in fidelity for sparse signals quantized to medium resolutions. We also model the hardware costs for implementing the CS encoder and results from a test chip designed in a 90 nm CMOS process that consumes only 1.9 [mu]W for operating frequencies below 20 kHz, verifies the models. The encoder is desioned to enable continuous, on-the-fly compression that is demonstrated on electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiogram (EKG) signals to show the applicability of CS. To address sub-threshold leakage, which limits the energy performance in CMOS-based sensor nodes, we develop design methodologies towards leveraging the zero leakage characteristics of MEM relays while overcoming their slower switching speeds. Projections on scaled relay circuits show the potential for greater than loX improvements in energy efficieicy over CMOS at up to 10-100 Mops for a variety of circuit sub-systems. Experimental results demonstrating functionality for several circuit building blocks validate the viability of the technology, while feedback from these results is used to refine the device design. Incorporating all of the design elements, w present simnulation results for our most recent test chip design which implements relay-based versions of the CS encoder circuits in a 0.25 jim lithographic process showing 5X improvement over our 90 nm CMOS design.
Heritable differences in respiratory drive and breathing pattern in mice during anaesthesia and emergence.

BACKGROUND Postanaesthetic hypoxia and ischaemia can lead to postoperative morbidity and mortality. We studied the effect of isoflurane anaesthesia in two inbred mouse strains known for phenotypic differences in breathing pattern and respiratory drive during carbon dioxide challenge and their first-generation offspring (F(1)). METHODS Using whole body plethysmography, we assessed respiratory rate (RR) and pressure amplitude (Amp) in male B6 (high responder to hypercapnia), C3 (low responder), and F(1) mice at rest, during anaesthesia with isoflurane, and during recovery from anaesthesia. At each time point, the magnitude and pattern of breathing were determined during hypercapnic challenge (FI(CO(2)) = 0.08). Data (mean (SD)) were analysed by generalized ANOVA with post hoc Bonferroni's correction (P<0.05). RESULTS During isoflurane anaesthesia, strain differences between B6 and C3 mice in RR were obscured while differences in Amp persisted. In contrast to baseline RR responses to carbon dioxide were significantly reduced at 0.5 MAC (increase in RR: 175 (33) bpm, 147 (44) bpm, 127 (33) bpm, for B6, C3, and F(1) strains respectively) and completely blocked at 1.5 MAC (change in RR: -3 (10) bpm, -2 (1) bpm, -4 (5) bpm, for B6, C3, and F(1) strains, respectively). During recovery, B6 mice showed a significant increase in RR (77 (33) bpm; P<0.0001) as well as in Amp. This was not observed in either C3 (-22 (31) bpm) or F(1) mice (23 (51) bpm). CONCLUSION Isoflurane anaesthesia abolished the strain differences in respiratory drive between B6, C3, and F(1) mice. However, during recovery from anaesthesia, significant strain variation in respiratory drive reappeared and was more pronounced compared with pre-anaesthetic levels. These results suggested, that genetic differences may have minimal contribution to decreased respiratory drive during anaesthesia, but may be a major risk factor for post-operative hypoventilation and the associated morbidity and mortality.
Willingness of Farmers to Transform Vacant Rural Residential Land into Cultivated Land in a Major Grain-Producing Area of Central China

A large amount of cultivated lands in China is occupied by vacant residential areas, thereby wasting land resources and placing local food security at risk. Therefore, transforming vacant rural residential land back to its previous form is urgently required to maintain the amount of cultivated land and guarantee food security. We comprehensively analyzed the willingness of farmers to participate in vacant residential land transformation and determine the factors that influence such willingness, including the awareness of farmers about their rural residential environment, their knowledge of residential land-use policies and their awareness of the consequences of such transformation. A detailed survey was conducted amongst 252 farmers owning vacant residential lands in central China. Amongst these farmers, 75, 87 and 90 were entirely, partly and not living on farming, respectively. Only half of these farmers were willing to transform the vacant residential land, whilst those farmers who were partly living on farming were less willing to participate in the transformation than those who were entirely and were not living on farming. The factors that influence the willingness to transform varied across different types of farmers. Farmers who were not and were partly living on farming were significantly affected by their awareness of their rural residential environment, their knowledge of residential land-use policies, the length of residential land vacant time and their household income. Those farmers who were partly living on farming were also influenced by the number of vacant residential plots they possessed. Farmers who were entirely living on farming were significantly affected by their knowledge of the residential land-use policies, the number of vacant residential plots they possessed, their awareness of the consequences of land transformation and their family size. Results indicate that farmers are anxious about vacant residential land loss and that a communication gap is observed between them. Therefore, along with the communication between farmers and the government, the publicity and transparency of the rural residential land-use policies must be improved to eliminate the communication gap, relieve the anxiety of farmers, and increase the willingness to transform their vacant residential lands.
Face recognition failures in schizotypy

Introduction. Studies suggest an important role of disturbances of self in schizophrenia and in schizotypy. Based on findings from a previous study (Brédart & Young, 2004), we developed a questionnaire assessing self-face recognition failures in everyday life (Self-Face Recognition Questionnaire; SFRQ) to investigate the relations between dimensions of schizotypy (cognitive-perceptual, interpersonal, disorganised) and self-face recognition disturbances. Methods. A sample of nonclinical participants (n = 170) completed the SFRQ and the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. Results. Factor analysis of SFRQ items revealed a clear three-factor structure consisting of: (1) self-face recognition difficulties, (2) unusual perception of own or other faces, and (3) other-face recognition difficulties. Correlational analyses between schizotypy dimensions and the SFRQ revealed that only the cognitive-perceptual and disorganised schizotypy dimensions correlated significantly with the SFRQ. By contrast, the interpersonal schizotypy dimension was not associated with the SFRQ. Conclusions. Findings provide further support that positive (cognitive-perceptual) and negative (interpersonal) schizotypy represent discrete neurobehavioural dimensions. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
Back pain reporting in children and adolescents: the impact of parents' educational level.

BACKGROUND Social class, including educational level, is a strong predictor for health-related perceptions and behavior and for health outcomes in general. It is not known whether parental education has an effect on back pain in their offspring. OBJECTIVES To establish whether parents' educational level is associated with back pain reporting and consequences of back pain in their children. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey. DATA COLLECTION Information on parental education was obtained through questionnaires to parents and back pain information through standardized interviews with the children. PARTICIPANTS Children aged 8 to 10 years (n = 481) and adolescents aged 14 to 16 years (n = 325) obtained through a proportional 2-stage cluster sample. SETTING Local schools in Odense, Denmark. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The strength of association and dose-response connection were studied between parental educational level (high/medium/low) and the outcome variables (back pain in the preceding month, and consequences of back pain) in their children. RESULTS There was a significant modest negative association between the level of parental education and back pain in children but not in adolescents. There was no significant association between parental educational level and back pain consequences. CONCLUSIONS Further research in this area requires a more ingenious approach such as use of more socially heterogeneous study populations than those usually found in Denmark.
[Effect of occupational stress on cardiovascular function of different vocational population].

OBJECTIVE To study the effect of occupational stress on cardiovascular function of different vocational population. METHODS The occupational stressors, risk factors of cardiovascular diseases were investigated by questionnaire in 839 people with 4 kinds of jobs. Blood pressure, sugar, and lipid were detected at the same time. RESULTS Blood pressure were higher in the groups of old age, long standing and teachers, and the abnormal rate of blood pressure was 21.69%. There was no difference in abnormal ECG among ages, standing and occupation, and the abnormal rate of ECG was 19.07%. Job control, job demands, job responsibility, role in a job and shift work were the main stress factors affecting systolic and diastolic blood pressure. More conflict in job, less chance of participation, severe job loads were the risk factors of primary hypertension. Accident due to job responsibility, job responsibility, role in a job were the main risk factors of abnormal electrocardiograph. Self-respect and activity beyond work were the good modifiers of heart function. CONCLUSION Occupational stress has certain effect on cardiovascular function.
Regulation of alcR, the positive regulatory gene of the ethanol utilization regulon of Aspergillus nidulans

The alcR positive control gene is necessary for the expression of both alcA (coding for alcohol dehydro‐genase ADH I.) and aldA (coding for aldehyde dehydro‐genase, AldDH) in Aspergillus nidulans. Using a cloned alcR probe and Northern blots analysis we show that: (1)alcR itself is inducible; (2)alcR inducibility depends on the expression of the alcR gene Itself; and (3) alcR is subject to carbon catabolite repression and its expression Is controlled by the negatively acting creA wide specificity gene. The repression of alcR is sufficient to explain the cariaon catabolite repression of ADH I and AldDH.
Who makes the decision? Patient's autonomy vs paternalism in a Confucian society.

Through the ages health professionals have depended on patients' co-operation and obedience as essential aspects of cure. The Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association in 1848, section 6, stated that "the obedience of a patient to the prescription of his physician should be prompt and implicit. " But A Patient's Bill of Rights published by the American Hospital Association in 1973 said that "the patient has the right to refuse treatment to the extent permitted by law. " At a quick glance, these two statements seem to put these two parties in conflict. The situation could even be more complicated when cultural elements are added to the consideration of who makes the final decision. A survey taken in the summer of 2002 in Taiwan showed that in a Confucian society, the family element often determines the course of decision and the patient's autonomy is overlooked. The head of the family, not the patient himself or herself, usually makes the decision, especially when the medical decision has something to do with a life or death situation.
ProGes : A User Interface for Multimedia Devices over The Internet of Things

With the rapid growth of online devices, a new concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging in which everyday devices will be connected to the Internet. As the number of devices in IoT is increasing, so is the complexity of the interactions between user and devices. There is a need to design intelligent user interfaces that could assist users in interactions. Many studies have been conducted on different interaction techniques such as proxemic and gesture interaction in order to propose an intuitive and intelligent system for controlling multimedia devices over the IoT, though most could not propose a universal solution. The present study proposes a proximity-based and gesture-enabled user interface for multimedia devices over IoT. The proposed method employs a cloud-based decision engine to support user to choose and interact with the most appropriate device, reliving the user from the burden of enumerating available devices manually. The decision engine observes the multimedia content and device properties, learns user preferences adaptively, and automatically recommends the most appropriate device to interact. In addition to that, the proposed system uses proximity information to find the user among people and provides her/him gesture control services. Furthermore, a new hand gesture vocabulary is proposed for controlling multimedia devices through conducting a multiphase elicitation study. The main advantage of this vocabulary is that it can be used for all multimedia devices. Both device recommendation system and gesture vocabulary are evaluated. The device recommendation system evaluation shows that the users agree with the proposed interaction 70% of the times. Moreover, the average agreement score of the proposed gesture vocabulary (0.56) exceeds the score of similar studies. An external user evaluation study shows that the average score of being a good-match is 4.08 out of 5 and the average of ease-of-performance equals to 4.21 out of 5. The memory test reveals that the proposed vocabulary is easy to remember since participants could remember and perform gestures in 3.13 seconds on average. In addition to that, the average accuracy of remembering gestures equals to 91.54%.
Design and Implementation of a Fine-Grained Software Inspection Tool

Although software inspection has led to improvements in software quality, many software systems continue to be deployed with unacceptable numbers of errors, even when software inspection is part of the development process. The difficulty of manually verifying that the software under inspection conforms to the rules is partly to blame. We describe the design and implementation of a tool designed to help alleviate this problem. The tool provides mechanisms for fine-grained inspection of software by exposing the results of sophisticated whole-program static analysis to the inspector. The tool computes many static-semantic representations of the program, including an accurate call graph and dependence graph. A whole-program pointer analysis is used to make sure that the representation is precise with respect to aliases induced by pointer usage. Views on the dependence graph and related representations are supported. Queries on the dependence graph allow an inspector to answer detailed questions about the semantics of the program. Facilities for openness and extensibility permit the tool to be integrated with many software development processes. The main challenge of the approach is to provide facilities to navigate and manage the enormous complexity of the dependence graph.
Effects of pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) on fat deposition in human GH transgenic rats

Abstract Growth hormone (GH) is an endocrine regulator of glucose and lipid metabolism as well as body growth. GH levels are decreased and a unique pulsatile secretory pattern becomes obvious after puberty particularly in males. Coincidentally with this, males tend to deposit body fat. Experimental and clinical evidence has accumulated that obesity is associated with a decrease in GH levels. A strain of transgenic rats has been generated with severe obesity but normal nose-to-tail length, which has low circulating GH levels without pulsatility (human growth hormone (hGH) transgenic rats). The present review mainly focuses on recent and current work analysing the relationship between the occurrence of obesity and low GH levels and/or the absence of GH pulsatility in this transgenic animal model. This model has elevated blood glucose, non-esterified fatty acid, insulin and leptin levels associated with hyperphagia, suggesting that these rats also carry insulin- and leptin-resistant characteristics. hGH transgenic rats were subjected to a pair-feeding treatment to normalize food intake and chronic GH replacement to normalize GH levels. While the pair-feeding for 8 weeks successfully suppressed body-weight gain, the fat pad : body weight ratio remained very similar to freely-eating control hGH transgenic rats, which indicates the hyperphagia is not the sole contributor to the excess fat accumulation in this model. However, continuous elevation of peripheral hGH levels (approximately 2-fold) for 8 weeks by means of a slow-release vehicle resulted in a significant decrease in the fat mass : body weight ratios by 30 %. This GH treatment altered neither food intake nor body-weight gain. Thus, two characteristic phenotypes observed in the hGH transgenic rats, hyperphagia and obesity, seem to be closely related to GH levels and GH secretory pattern. This relationship might be working in the regulation of changes in seasonal body composition in wild animals.
Pneumococcal Meningitis in Pregnancy and Puerperium

show that bleeding can be closely defined and described as follows: (1) non-haemorrhagic: no bleeding either spontaneously or to light touch; (2) moderately haemorrhagic: bleeding to light touch, but no spontaneous bleeding seen ahead of instrument at initial inspection; (3) severely haemorrhagic: spontaneous bleeding seen ahead of instrument at initial inspection with bleeding to light touch (blood on the surface of normal mucosa is thus excluded). Using a similar classification, we, taken in pairs and scoring independently, agreed in more than two out of three patients. There is no final evidence that the degree of haernorrhage from the mucosa is closely related to the severity of the disease, but there is good presumptive evidence that this is so. Clinical conditions can be graded by summation of the scores of individual criteria as has been done for thyroid disease by Crooks et al. (1959). If a scoring system is not used the definitions for each grade must be mutually exclusive. If this is not so and two unrelated criteria are included in each grade, overlap will often occur so that it becomes impossible to fit some appearances into a single grade. This was one of the causes of failure of the definitions of "activity" used in Patients 1-30, because such a description as "dry, granular, friable" does not correspond to any grade. Summary
The contribution of the left and right hemispheres to early recovery from aphasia: A SPECT prospective study

This prospective study examined the relationship between post-stroke recovery of aphasia and changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF). To address the question of right hemisphere (RH) involvement in restitution of language, we tested the hypothesis that the increase in perfusion of the RH is crucial for early recovery from aphasia. Twenty-four right-handed patients with acute aphasia following left hemisphere (LH) ischaemic stroke were examined twice with a six-month interval. At each session CBF and language scores were measured on the same stroke patients. Language was measured by selected tasks derived from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE). The SPECT scans were obtained using 99mTc-ECD on a triple-head gamma camera Multispect-3. Although initial CBF measured for the whole group of aphasic patients was not a predictor for future language recovery for either hemisphere, increased perfusion of the RH during a six-month interval was found to parallel the recovery of aphasic disorders. There was a correlation between the change in the right parietal CBF (but not the left) and a change in numerous language abilities. Nevertheless, only CBF values on the left predicted performance on the language tests at initial and follow-up examinations. When the area damaged on structural imaging was excluded from perfusion analysis, only subcortical CBF change on the left showed a positive correlation with language improvement. Thus, the cerebral mechanism associated with early recovery from aphasia is a dynamic and complex process that may involve both hemispheres. Probably this mechanism involves functional reorganisation in the speech-dominant (damaged) hemisphere and regression of haemodynamic disturbances in the non-dominant (structurally intact) hemisphere.
Diversity in mathematics assessment equals diversity in opinion

Summary We undertook a study to investigate the views of both students and staff in our department towards assessment in mathematics, as a precursor to considering increasing the diversity of assessment types. In a survey and focus group there was reasonable agreement amongst the students with regards major themes such as mode of assessment. However, this level of agreement was not seen amongst the staff, where discussions regarding diversity in mathematics assessment definitely revealed a difference of opinion. As a consequence, we feel that the greatest barriers to increasing diversity may be with staff, and so more efforts are needed to communicate to staff the advantages and disadvantages, in order to give them greater confidence in trying a range of assessment types.
Selection models and pattern‐mixture models to analyse longitudinal quality of life data subject to drop‐out

Longitudinally observed quality of life data with large amounts of drop‐out are analysed. First we used the selection modelling framework, frequently used with incomplete studies. An alternative method consists of using pattern‐mixture models. These are also straightforward to implement, but result in a different set of parameters for the measurement and drop‐out mechanisms. Since selection models and pattern‐mixture models are based upon different factorizations of the joint distribution of measurement and drop‐out mechanisms, comparing both models concerning, for example, treatment effect, is a useful form of a sensitivity analysis. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.