Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reinforcement Learning and Feedback Control: Using Natural Decision Methods to Design Optimal Adaptive Controllers

This article describes the use of principles of reinforcement learning to design feedback controllers for discrete- and continuous-time dynamical systems that combine features of adaptive control and optimal control. Adaptive control [1], [2] and optimal control [3] represent different philosophies for designing feedback controllers. Optimal controllers are normally designed of ine by solving Hamilton JacobiBellman (HJB) equations, for example, the Riccati equation, using complete knowledge of the system dynamics. Determining optimal control policies for nonlinear systems requires the offline solution of nonlinear HJB equations, which are often difficult or impossible to solve. By contrast, adaptive controllers learn online to control unknown systems using data measured in real time along the system trajectories. Adaptive controllers are not usually designed to be optimal in the sense of minimizing user-prescribed performance functions. Indirect adaptive controllers use system identification techniques to first identify the system parameters and then use the obtained model to solve optimal design equations [1]. Adaptive controllers may satisfy certain inverse optimality conditions [4].
Association between circulating adiponectin and interleukin-10 levels in android obesity: effects of weight loss.

OBJECTIVE Adiponectin inhibits vascular inflammation and increases IL-10 mRNA expression in human macrophages. Thus, we investigated the possible relationship between plasma adiponectin and IL-10 levels and the effects of a diet-induced moderate weight loss on both cytokines. PATIENTS AND STUDY DESIGN Plasma adiponectin and IL-10 levels were analyzed in 64 android [body mass index (BMI), > 28 kg/m2; waist to hip ratio (WHR), > or = 0.86] and 20 gynoid [BMI, > 28 kg/m2; WHR, < 0.86] obese healthy women. Android obese women (49 +/- 14 yr) had a mean BMI of 37.1 +/- 5.3 kg/m2, similar to that of gynoid obese women (49 +/- 11 yr; BMI, 33.4 +/- 2.6 kg/m2). Twenty nonobese control women (46 +/- 11 yr; BMI, 25.2 +/- 2.2 kg/m2) were also studied. In 15 android obese women, measurements were repeated after a 12-wk diet period (1200 kcal/d). RESULTS Median adiponectin [5.2 (range, 3.3-7.8) vs. 12.1 (9.7-13.9) vs. 15.0 (12.6-18.2) microg/ml; P < 0.0001] and IL-10 [1.8 (1.2-3.3) vs. 3.5 (2.9-4.3) and vs. 4.1 (3.5-4.8) pg/ml; P < 0.0001] levels were lower in android vs. gynoid vs. nonobese women. Among android obese women, low adiponectin levels were independently related (P < 0.0001) to decreased IL-10 levels, independently of BMI, WHR, or insulin resistance. No significant change in either median adiponectin or IL-10 levels was observed after body weight reduction (8 +/- 4 kg; P < 0.01), although percent changes in adiponectin paralleled those in IL-10 (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Android obesity is associated with a concomitant reduction of IL-10 and adiponectin levels. However, the antiinflammatory status of obesity might require prolonged periods of energy-restricted diets to revert to normal.
The pulse distributed file system

A network of powerful personal computers, linked by a high‐speed local area network, is being seen increasingly as an alternative to a traditional centralized time‐sharing operating system. The PULSE project is investigating how such a system may be constructed to give the benefits of a self‐sufficient personal computer to each user without losing the facilities for communication and sharing of data inherent in centralized systems. In particular, a distributed file system has been built which provides a single global UNIX UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. ‐like hierarchy, with a consistent appearance when accessed from any machine. Replicated copies of files are maintained to improve reliability, increase performance, and enable each machine to run stand‐alone, albeit with reduced facilities.
Outcome after first relapse in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia: A report based on the Dutch Childhood Oncology Group (DCOG) relapse all 98 protocol

We report on the treatment of children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in first relapse. The protocol focused on: (1) Intensive chemotherapy preceding allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) in early bone marrow relapse; (2) Rotational chemotherapy in late relapse, without donor; (3) Postponement of cerebro‐spinal irradiation in late isolated CNS relapse; and (4) Treatment in very late bone marrow relapse with chemotherapy only.
Intercultural Sensitivity and Cross-cultural Adjustment among Malaysian Students Abroad

Effective socio-cultural integration has formed Malaysia into a nation with harmonious ethnic diversification and living. Cultural understanding is a foundation to sustain a respectful interethnic relationship among multi-ethnic populations in this country. However, Malaysian may experience cross-cultural difficulties when facing a monoculture or unusual cultural environment overseas. Thus, main purpose of the present study is to examine the extent of intercultural sensitivity support the effectiveness of cross-cultural adjustments among Malaysian students while studying and living abroad. Key finding found in the present study shows the magnitude of intercultural sensitivity is moderately facilitate cross-cultural adjustment among Malaysian students abroad. The implications towards the effectiveness of intercultural relations are also highlighted and discussed. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013. v3n7p693
Fungal Laccases and Their Biotechnological Applications with Special Reference to Bioremediation

The exploration for efficient and green oxidation technologies has increased the interest in the use of enzymes to replace conventional non-biological methods. Among the different existing oxidant enzymes, laccases have been the subject of study due to their importance in environment protection, where enzymatic catalysis could serve as a more environmentally benign alternative than the currently used chemical processes. Fungal laccases are extracellular multi-copper oxidases mainly secreted by filamentous fungi. They have been attracting the attention of environmental scientists because of their ability to oxidise a wide variety of aromatic compounds. Though the laccases are demonstrated to have a range of promising applications, they are used in bioremediation of soils, water and the development of environmentally friendly processes in the pulp and paper industry. This paper reviews the potential applications of laccase enzymes with special reference to bioremediation. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Graft and systemic disease in long‐term survivors of liver transplantation

In this clinicopathological study, we have examined the prevalence of biochemical and histological graft abnormalities in 116 patients who have lived for longer than five years since orthotopic liver transplantation (mean, 8.4 years [range, 5.2‐19.5 years]). In each patient, the protocol biopsy was carried out in addition to full clinical, biochemical, and immunological evaluation. The renal function was preserved in most patients (mean creatinine, 86 micromol/L [0.95 mg%]) with only 35% showing any degree of impairment, and only one patient with pretransplant renal failure required dialysis. Forty one (35%) of the patients had normal biochemical liver function tests (LFTs); 19 of these patients had histologic abnormalities. Of the remaining 75 patients with abnormal LFTs, 65 were found to have histological abnormalities on liver biopsy. Some of the 84 patients with an abnormal histology had more than one finding but were placed into 6 categories according to the main change as follows: chronic hepatitis in 27; primary biliary cirrhosis‐like changes in 8; cholangitis in 15; structural anomalies in 26; chronic rejection in 2; mild acute cellular rejection in 1; and miscellaneous in 5. The recurrence of B, C, or autoimmune hepatitis accounted for 14 cases of chronic hepatitis, whereas, in 13 cases, no cause could be detected. The latter cases included 8 patients who had liver transplants for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), leaving suboptimally treated rejection or disease recurrence as possible causes. Characteristic histological features of PBC were observed in 8 additional cases that had liver transplantations for this disease. Of the 26 cases with structural anomalies, various types of occlusive vasculopathy were detected during pre‐ or posttransplantation in 12 cases. All but one of these were maintained on azathioprine, the only possible etiological factor in the 14 other cases, 5 of whom showed stabilization or clinical and histological improvement following withdrawal of the drug. De‐novo malignancy was seen in 3.4% of cases, causing mortality in only one patient to date. This study demonstrates an unexpectedly high prevalence of histological abnormalities that is found often in the presence of normal biochemical liver‐function in liver grafts of long‐ term survivors. Although graft loss at this time is rare, protocol liver biopsies at 5 years, and thereafter at 2‐year intervals, may allow for earlier beneficial therapeutic intervention.
The Right Information May Matter More Than Frequency-Place Alignment: Simulations of Frequency-Aligned and Upward Shifting Cochlear Implant Processors for a Shallow Electrode Array Insertion

Objective: It has been claimed that speech recognition with a cochlear implant is dependent on the correct frequency alignment of analysis bands in the speech processor with characteristic frequencies (CFs) at electrode locations. However, the use of filters aligned in frequency to a relatively basal electrode array position leads to significant loss of lower frequency speech information. This study uses an acoustic simulation to compare two approaches to the matching of speech processor filters to an electrode array having a relatively shallow depth within the typical range, such that the most apical element is at a CF of 1851 Hz. Two noise-excited vocoder speech processors are compared, one with CF-matched filters, and one with filters matched to CFs at basilar membrane locations 6 mm more apical than electrode locations. Design: An extended crossover training design examined pre- and post-training performance in the identification of vowels and words in sentences for both processors. Subjects received about 3 hours of training with each processor in turn. Results: Training improved performance with both processors, but training effects were greater for the shifted processor. For a male talker, the shifted processor led to higher post-training scores than the frequency-aligned processor with both vowels and sentences. For a female talker, post-training vowel scores did not differ significantly between processors, whereas sentence scores were higher with the frequency-aligned processor. Conclusions: Even for a shallow electrode insertion, we conclude that a speech processor should represent information from important frequency regions below 1 kHz and that the possible cost of frequency misalignment can be significantly reduced with listening experience.
Effect of atorvastatin withdrawal on circulating coenzyme Q10 concentration in patients with hypercholesterolemia

Statin therapy can reduce the biosynthesis of both cholesterol and coenzyme Q10 by blocking the common upstream mevalonate pathway. Coenzyme Q10 depletion has been speculated to play a potential role in statin‐related adverse events, and withdrawal of statin is the choice in patients developing myotoxicity or liver toxicity. However, the effect of statin withdrawal on circulating levels of coenzyme Q10 remains unknown. Twenty‐six patients with hypercholesterolemia received atorvastatin at 10 mg/day for 3 months. Serum lipid profiles and coenzyme Q10 were assessed before and immediately after 3 months and were also measured 2 and 3 days after the last day on the statin. After 3 months' atorvastatin therapy, serum levels of total cholesterol (TC), low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL‐C) and coenzyme Q10 (0.43 ± 0.23 to 0.16 ± 0.10 μg/mL) were all significantly reduced (all p < 0.001). On day 2 after the last atorvastatin, the coenzyme Q10 level was significantly elevated (0.37 ± 0.16 μg/mL) and maintained the same levels on day 3 (0.39 ± 0.18 μg/mL) compared with those on month 3 (both p < 0.001), while TC and LDL‐C did not significantly change within the same 3 days. These results suggest that statin inhibition of coenzyme Q10 synthesis is less strict than inhibition of cholesterol biosynthesis.
Effects of drugs of abuse and signal predictability in two models of sustained attention in pigeons

&NA; The acute effects of ethanol, pentobarbital, D‐amphetamine and nicotine were determined in two animal models of attention. This study examined if changing the predictability of the stimulus presentation modifies drug effects under two attention tasks, in male White Carneau pigeons. The first task was a continuous‐trial sustained attention task. For seven pigeons, the frequency of signal presentation was constant and predictable, once every 60 s [a fixedinterval 60 s (FI‐60) signal presentation]. For seven additional pigeons, the frequency of signal presentation averaged once every 60 s, but the interval between presentations was random and variable [a variable‐interval 60 s (VI‐60) signal presentation]. Following ethanol (0.3‐3 g/kg) and pentobarbital (0.3‐13 mg/kg), decreases in p(hit) and large increases in p(false alarm) occurred at doses that did not impair response rates. Following D‐amphetamine (0.03‐5.6 mg/kg) and nicotine (0.03‐3 mg/kg), a significant decrease in p(hit) and increase in p(miss) occurred at doses that did not impair response rates. The second task was a discrete‐trial attention task, under which eight pigeons were presented a constant and predictable signal and eight were presented a random and unpredictable signal. Following ethanol (0.3‐3 g/kg) and pentobarbital (0.3‐13 mg/kg), drug effects on accuracy occurred at doses that suppressed responding. The schedule of signal presentation did not alter the effects of ethanol or pentobarbital. Following D‐amphetamine (0.03‐5.6 mg/kg) and nicotine (0.03‐3 mg/kg), a significant decrease in p(hit) and increase in p(error of omission) occurred at doses that did not impair response latencies, but there were no differences between pigeons responding under the predictable (FI‐60) or variable (VI‐60) signal presentations. The observation of differential drug effects [e.g. p(false alarms)] on performance under the continuoustrial procedure supports the validity of the procedure for measuring drug effects on attention. However, changes in signal predictability had little effect on control or drug conditions under this continuous‐trial sustained attention procedure. Behavioural Pharmacology 14:279‐294 © 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Atherosclerotic Peripheral Vascular Disease Symposium II: nomenclature for vascular diseases.

Peripheral vascular diseases are important components of cardiovascular medicine. The high prevalence of these disorders in the clinical setting mandates effective communication among healthcare providers. The public health significance of these conditions requires clear and consistent terminology for community audiences. Therefore, the goal of this writing group was to suggest definitions, usage, and nomenclature of specific terms commonly used to describe vascular diseases by cardiovascular specialists and primary care communities. The need for clarity is driven by 2 major challenges: (1) the need for use of common keywords for literature searches; and (2) the need for healthcare professionals to use common, reasoned terminology when communicating with each other and with the public. The major structural components of the vascular system are the veins, lymphatic vessels, and arteries. These serve as the basis of the nomenclature system for vascular diseases (Figure). Figure. Major classification of vascular diseases. *Includes inflammatory, artery dysplasias, congenital, traumatic, and infections. In this report, the writing group focuses only on nomenclature that applies to non–coronary artery diseases. Venous and lymphatic diseases were outside the scope of this conference. Diseases of arteries are classified further into atherosclerotic occlusive disorders, nonatherosclerotic occlusive disorders, and aneurysms. …
The Visual Extent of an Object Suppose we have the bounding boxes around objects

The visual extent of an object reaches beyond the object itself. This is a long standing fact in psychology and is reflected in image retrieval techniques which aggregate statistics from the whole image in order to identify the object within. However, it is unclear to what degree and how the visual extent of an object affects classification performance. This paper investigates the visual extent of an object from two angles: (a) Not knowing the object location, we determine where in the image the support for object classification resides. (b) Assuming an ideal box around the object we evaluate the relative contribution of the object interior, object border, and surround. In (a) we find that the surroundings contribute significantly to object classification where for boat the object area contributes negatively. In (b) we find that the surroundings no longer contribute. Comparing (a) and (b) we find that with ideal object localisation there is a considerable gain in classification accuracy to be made.
Diffuse follicular variant of papillary carcinoma of the thyroid

Follicular and papillary carcinomas are the most common malignant tumours of the thyroid gland and generally run an indolent clinical course'. On the other hand, recent progress in surgical pathology of thyroid tumours has disclosed the existence of several clinicopathological variants of follicular and papillary carcinomas which carry a worse p rogno~ i s~-~ . The diffuse follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma, which was recently described by SobrinhoSimoes et aL6, is one such variant and shows unique clinical and histological characteristics. Recently we encountered a thyroid carcinoma of this variant in a 13-year-old boy. In the present report, we describe the morphological appearance of this, apparently, unique case.
Stereotypies in Rett syndrome

Background: Hand stereotypies are considered a hallmark of Rett syndrome (RTT) and are usually described as symmetric movements at the midline. However, related pathologies may show the same type of involuntary movement. Furthermore, patients with RTT also have stereotypies with other localizations that are less well characterized. Methods: We analyzed stereotypies in 83 patients with RTT, 53 with and 30 without a mutation detected in the MECP2 gene. Patients were observed and videotaped always by the same pediatric neurologist. Stereotypies were classified, and data were submitted to statistical analysis for comparison of mutation-positive and -negative patients and analysis of their evolution with the disease. Results: All the patients showed hand stereotypies that coincided with or preceded the loss of purposeful hand movements in 62% of the patients with MECP2 mutations.The hair pulling stereotypy was more frequent in the group with detected mutations, whereas hand washing was not. Hand gaze was absent in all RTT patients with MECP2 mutations. Patients with MECP2 mutations also had more varied stereotypies, and the number of stereotypies displayed by each patient decreased significantly with age in this group. In all patients, stereotypies other than manual tended to disappear with the evolution of the disease. Conclusions: Although symmetric midline hand stereotypies were not specific to patients with an MECP2 mutation, some of the other stereotypies seemed to be more characteristic of this group. In patients younger than 10 years and meeting the necessary diagnostic criteria of Rett syndrome, the association of hand stereotypies without hand gaze, bruxism, and two or more of the other stereotypies seemed to be highly indicative of the presence of an MECP2 mutation.
A Trust-based Message Evaluation and Propagation Framework in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper, we propose a trust-based message propagation and evaluation framework to support the effective evaluation of information sent by peers and the immediate control of false information in a VANET. More specifically, our trust-based message propagation collects peers trust opinions about a message sent by a peer (message sender) during the propagation of the message. We improve on an existing cluster-based data routing mechanism by employing a secure and efficient identity-based aggregation scheme for the aggregation and propagation of the senders message and the trust opinions. These trust opinions weighted by the trustworthiness of the peers modeled using a combination of role-based and experience-based trust metrics are used by cluster leaders to compute a ma jority opinion about the senders message, in order to proactively detect false information. Malicious messages are dropped and controlled to a local minimum without further affecting other peers. Our trust-based message evaluation allows each peer to evaluate the trustworthiness of the message by also taking into account other peers trust opinions about the message and the peer-to-peer trust of these peers. The result of the evaluation derives an effective action decision for the peer. We evaluate our framework in simulations of real life traffic scenarios by employing real maps with vehicle entities following traffic rules and road limits. Some entities involved in the simulations are possibly malicious and may send false information to mislead others or spread spam messages to jam the network. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework signicantly improves network scalability by reducing the utilization of wireless bandwidth caused by a large number of malicious messages. Our system is also demonstrated to be effective in mitigating against malicious messages and protecting peers from being affected. Thus, our framework is particularly valuable in the deployment of VANETs by achieving a high level of scalability and effectiveness.
The Effect of Pain on Health-Related Quality of Life in the Immediate Postoperative Period

The hypothesis of this study was to determine if the severity of postoperative pain would affect patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQL) in the immediate postoperative period (within 2 wk of surgery). We designed this study as a prospective, nonrandomized observational trial in a tertiary academic care center. Patients undergoing elective total hip or knee replacement surgery were eligible. Patients received a standardized intraoperative general or epidural anesthetic followed by IV patient-controlled analgesia or patient-controlled epidural analgesia. Short Form (SF)-12, visual analog scores for pain at rest and pain with activity, nausea, and itching were assessed on postoperative days 1–5, 7, and 14. The severity of pain correlated with a decrease in both the physical and mental component of the SF-12. The severity of nausea correlated with a decrease in the mental but not physical component of the SF-12. The severity of itching did not correlate with a change in the SF-12. Our findings suggest that an increase in postoperative pain will decrease a patient’s quality of life in the immediate postoperative period; however, several methodologic issues exist when assessing HRQL in the immediate postoperative period.