Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Pilot Study Examining the Role of Treatment Type and Gender in Cortisol Functioning

A Pilot Study Examining the Role of Treatment Type and Gender in Cortisol Functioning Stephanie Young Davis School of Family Life, BYU Doctor of Philosophy This pilot study examined the effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) compared to Treatment As Usual (TAU) in improving cortisol functioning among distressed couples. It also investigated the role of gender in cortisol functioning. Measures for cortisol were collected at five time points, both at preand posttreatment. Data were collected from a total of 60 couples, 20 of which received EFT and 40 of which received TAU. Overall, results from a two-way analysis of variance suggest that there are no significant differences between men or women, nor among couples in EFT and TAU, in posttreatment cortisol functioning. Directions for future research are discussed.
Joint Incentive Mechanism for Paid Content Caching and Price Based Cache Replacement Policy in Named Data Networking

Internet traffic volume is continuing to increase rapidly. Named data networking (NDN) has been introduced to support this Internet traffic growth through caching contents close to consumers. While caching in NDN is beneficial to both Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs), ISPs serve cached contents independently without any coordination with CPs. By authorizing the ISPs to cache and distribute the contents accessible on payments, it becomes impractical for CPs to control content access and payments. In this paper, we address these challenges by proposing a joint incentive mechanism and a price-based cache replacement (PBCR) policy for paid content in NDN that improves the ISP’s and CPs’ profits. We use an auction theory, where the ISP earns profits from caching by alleviating traffic load on transit links and participating in contents selling. Therefore, before the ISP starts selling cached contents, it needs to cache them first. Furthermore, the ISP cache capacity is limited; therefore, we propose PBCR, where the PBCR triggers the content that needs to be replaced when the cache storage is full based on both content price and link cost. The simulation results show that our proposal increases the profits of all the network players involved in paid content caching and improves cache hit ratio.
End-Stage Kidney Disease in Patients With Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease: A 12-Year Study Based on the Canadian Organ Replacement Registry

Background: Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the most common hereditary kidney disease, with afflicted patients often progressing to end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) requiring renal replacement therapy (RRT). As the timelines to ESKD are predictable over decades, it follows that ADPKD patients should be optimized regarding kidney transplantation, home dialysis therapies, and vascular access. Objectives: To examine the association of kidney transplantation, dialysis modalities, and vascular access in ADPKD patients compared with a matched, non-ADPKD cohort. Setting: Canadian patients from 2001-2012 excluding Quebec. Patients: All adult incident ESKD patients who received dialysis or a kidney transplant. Measurements: ADPKD as defined by the treating physician. Methods: ADPKD and non-ADPKD patients were propensity score (PS) matched (1:4) using demographics, comorbidities, and lab values. Conditional logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine associations with kidney transplantation (preemptive or any), dialysis modality (peritoneal, short daily, home, or in-center hemodialysis [HD]), vascular access (arteriovenous fistula [AVF], permanent or temporary central venous catheter [CVC]), and dialysis survival. Results: We matched 2120 ADPKD (99.9%) with 8283 non-ADPKD with no significant imbalances between the groups. ADPKD was significantly associated with preemptive kidney transplantation (odds ratio [OR] = 7.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.74-8.87), any kidney transplant (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 2.14-2.63), and initial therapy of nocturnal daily HD (OR = 2.74, 95% CI = 1.38-5.44), whereas in-center intermittent HD was significantly less likely in the ADPKD population (OR = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.54-0.65). There was no difference in peritoneal dialysis (PD) as initial RRT but lower use of any PD among the ADPKD group (OR = 0.85, 95% CI = 0.77-0.95). ADPKD patients were significantly more likely to have an AVF (OR = 3.25, 95% CI = 2.79-3.79) and less likely to have either a permanent (OR 0.68, 95% CI 0.59-0.78) or temporary (OR = 0.49, 95% CI = 0.41-0.59) CVC as compared with the non-ADPKD cohort. Survival on either in-center HD or PD was better for ADPKD patients (HD: hazard ratio [HR] 0.48, 95% CI 0.44-0.53; PD: HR 0.73, 95% CI 0.60-0.88). Limitations: Conservative care patients were not captured; despite PS matching, the possibility of residual confounding remains. Conclusions: ADPKD patients were more likely to receive a kidney transplant, use home HD, dialyze with an AVF, and have better survival relative to non-ADPKD patients. Conversely, they were less likely to receive PD either as initial therapy or anytime during ESKD. This may be attributed to higher transplantation or clinical decision-making processes susceptible to education and intervention.
Morphine-Dexmedetomidine Mixture Versus Morphine Alone for Postoperative Analgesia

Objective: To compare the quality of postoperative analgesia between intraoperative administration of Morphine-Dexmedetomidine versus Morphine alone Methods: A total of 82 adults of both gender, aged between 42 and 71 years. All according to (American Society of Anesthesiologists) class I-II were assigned for various elective abdominal operations under general balanced anesthesia at King Hussein Medical Center during the period from January to October 2010. Patients were divided into two groups. Group D (n=41) received intravenous Morphine sulphate 0.1 mg/kg and Dexmedetomidine (primary loading dose of 1 mcg/kg over 10 min. followed by 0.4 mcg/kg/h) and group M (n=41) received intravenous Morphine sulphate 0.1 mg/kg, both given half an hour before the completion of surgery. Postoperative analgesia quality was evaluated using Visual Analog Scale and Morphine consumption in the recovery room for the first 1 hour then in the surgical ward for the next 24 hours. Results: Median pain severity score was 3 in group D and 6 in group M during the first postoperative 60 minutes and 2 minutes in group D, 3 minutes in group M after 24 hours. About 83% of patients in group M needed additional Morphine compared to 26.8% of patients in group D (P<0.05) in the recovery room to attain equivalent analgesia. Conclusion: Intraoperative administration of intravenous Morphine-Dexmedetomidine mixture produces higher postoperative analgesia than Morphine alone.
BOHB: Robust and Efficient Hyperparameter Optimization at Scale

Modern deep learning methods are very sensitive to many hyperparameters, and, due to the long training times of state-of-the-art models, vanilla Bayesian hyperparameter optimization is typically computationally infeasible. On the other hand, bandit-based configuration evaluation approaches based on random search lack guidance and do not converge to the best configurations as quickly. Here, we propose to combine the benefits of both Bayesian optimization and bandit-based methods, in order to achieve the best of both worlds: strong anytime performance and fast convergence to optimal configurations. We propose a new practical state-of-the-art hyperparameter optimization method, which consistently outperforms both Bayesian optimization and Hyperband on a wide range of problem types, including high-dimensional toy functions, support vector machines, feed-forward neural networks, Bayesian neural networks, deep reinforcement learning, and convolutional neural networks. Our method is robust and versatile, while at the same time being conceptually simple and easy to implement.
Proactive Eavesdropping Using UAV Systems with Full-Duplex Ground Terminals

In addition of monitoring the environment of interest, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system can be utilized to actively monitor possible suspicious wireless communications in vicinity. To this end, we propose a proactive eavesdropping scheme wherein a full-duplex (FD) monitor eavesdrops suspicious communication while sending the collected information to the UAV. Our objective is to maximize the eavesdropping capability, while satisfying a certain quality-of- service requirement in a UAV network. In the case where FD monitor is equipped with single transmit/receive antennas, we propose semi- analytical solutions for the UAV altitude and monitor transmit power, whereas in the case of multiple transmit and single receive antennas, a joint optimization problem to determine the transmit beamformer, UAV altitude, and monitor transmit power is efficiently solved using semi- definite relaxation approach. Simulation results show that significant performance improvements can be achieved through optimization. Moreover, achievable performance gains highly depend on the system parameters such as the user zone, maximum monitor transmission power, and the strength of the residual self-interference.
Team Deep Neural Networks for Interference Channels

In this paper, we propose to use Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to solve so-called Team Decision (TD) problems, in which decentralized Decision Makers (DMs) aim at maximizing a common utility on the basis of locally available Channel State Information (CSI) without any additional communication or iteration. In the proposed configuration -coined Team DNNs (T-DNNs)-, the decision at each DM is approximated using a DNN and the weights of all DNNs are jointly trained, even though the implementation remains fundamentally decentralized. Turning to a practical application, the problem of decentralized link scheduling in Interference Channels (IC) is reformulated as a TD problem so that the T-DNNs approach can be applied. After adequate training, the scheduling obtained using the T-DNNs flexibly adapts to the decentralized CSI configuration to outperform other scheduling algorithms, thus proposing a novel efficient solution to a problem that has remained elusive for years.
Macroeconomic Risk and Momentum Profits

Macroeconomic risk continues to be proposed as a source of stock price momentum. For instance, Liu and Zhang (2008) claim that the growth rate of industrial production “plays an important role in driving momentum profits”. This paper shows that the growth rate of industrial production is not the source of momentum profits. Because recent winners and recent losers have nearly identical loadings on the growth rate of industrial production outside of January, there is essentially a net zero factor loading in the 11 months a year when momentum does exist—and a difference only in January, when losers massively outperform winners. We also document the fact that the growth rate of industrial production is not a priced risk factor outside of January. Moreover, application of the same methodology to all factors reveals no evidence that an explanation for momentum profits lies in macroeconomic risk. We appreciate comments from Bruce Grundy, Neal Galpin and seminar participants at New York University. Chelsea Yaqiong Yao wrote parts of the paper while visiting NYU, and so she would like to thank the people there for their hospitality.
MAT-CNN-SOPC: Motionless Analysis of Traffic Using Convolutional Neural Networks on System-On-a-Programmable-Chip

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have become an important pillar in modern “smart city” framework which demands intelligent involvement of machines. Traffic load recognition can be categorized as an important and challenging issue for such systems. Recently, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models have drawn considerable amount of interest in many areas such as weather classification, human rights violation detection through images, due to its accurate prediction capabilities. This work tackles real-life traffic load recognition problem on System-On-a-Programmable-Chip (SOPC) platform and coin it as MAT-CNN-SOPC, which uses an intelligent retraining mechanism of the CNN with known environments. The proposed methodology is capable of enhancing the efficacy of the approach by 2.44x in comparison to the state-of-art and proven through experimental analysis. We have also introduced a mathematical equation, which is capable of quantifying the suitability of using different CNN models over the other for a particular application based implementation.
Runoff and Soil Loss from Revegetated Grasslands in the Hilly Loess Plateau Region, China: Influence of Biocrust Patches and Plant Canopies

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) cover up to 60-70% of the soil surface in grasslands rehabilitated since the Grain for Green project was implemented in the hilly Loess Plateau region in 1999, which exerted significant impacts on runoff and soil loss from revegetated grasslands. In the study, field plots were used to investigate runoff and soil loss in sites of a 4- and a 13-year revegetated grassland, with each exhibiting an early and a later successional biocrust, respectively. The objectives of the study were to (1) examine the role of biocrusts on runoff and soil loss during their early and later successional stages in a semiarid region under water erosion, (2) determine the influence of biocrusts on soil antiscourability with different runoff intensities, and (3) isolate the effects of biocrust patches and vascular plant canopies on runoff and soil loss from revegetated grasslands. Treatments used in both sites included (1) retaining biocrusts and plant canopies intact (CP), (2) retaining biocrusts without plant canopies (CNP), (3) retaining plant canopies without biocrusts (PNC), and (4) removing both biocrusts and plant canopies (NCP). The simulated scouring water flux was designed as 7.8, 12.0, and 16.0 L · min �1 to reflect local rainfall conditions. The results indicated that the runoff yield was increased by biocrust patches in their well-development stage. Runoff was increased by 15.1% when plant canopies were retained and 16.0% when plant canopies were removed in the 13-year revegetated grassland with the 12.0 L · min �1 scouring water flux. Compared with biocrust patches, plant canopies reduced runoff by 11.3% (with biocrusts) and 8.4% (biocrusts was removed) with the same scouring water flux. No significant difference was found in runoff yield with respect to the four treatments in the 4-year revegetated grassland. In contrast, 92% of the sediments were reduced for the formation of biocrusts in their early successional stage (cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts) in the 4-year revegetated grassland with respect to CNP compared with NCP at the 12.0 L=min scouring intensity. No sediment was generated on either CP or CNP treatments in grassland revegetated for 13 years (moss-dominated biocrusts) with the same intensity of simulated runoff. Compared with biocrusts, plant canopies had a limited influence on soil loss. This amounted to reductions of 45 and 10% in soil loss for grasslands that revegetated for 4 and 13 years, respectively. The results of the study suggest that biocrusts play an important role in soil loss control from water erosion in semiarid regions, although there was a potential increase in runoff yield. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000633. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Runoff; Soil loss; Rangeland; Arid lands; China. Author keywords: Biological soil crust; Successional stage; Runoff and soil loss; Plant canopy; Hilly Loess Plateau region.
Electrochemically Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles Are Active Against Planktonic and Biofilm Cells of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Other Cystic Fibrosis-Associated Bacterial Pathogens

A novel, electrochemically synthesized, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) formulation was evaluated in vitro against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia cepacia, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and Staphylococcus aureus strains from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. AgNPs were particularly active against P. aeruginosa and B. cepacia planktonic cells (median MIC: 1.06 and 2.12 μg/ml, respectively) by a rapid, bactericidal and concentration-dependent effect. AgNPs showed to be particularly effective against P. aeruginosa and S. aureus biofilm causing a viability reduction ranging from 50% (1×MIC) to >99.9% (4×MIC). Electron microscopy showed that AgNPs deconstruct extracellular matrix of P. aeruginosa biofilm, and accumulate at the cell surface causing cell death secondary to membrane damage. Compared to Tobramycin, AgNPs showed comparable, or even better, activity against planktonic and biofilm P. aeruginosa cells. AgNPs at concentrations effective against B. cepacia and P. aeruginosa were not toxic to G. mellonella larvae. Our silver-based formulation might be an alternative to antibiotics in CF patients. Further in vitro and in vivo studies are warranted to confirm this therapeutic potential.
How accurate is the urine dipstick test for diagnosing urinary tract infection?

Objectives: Urine dipstick is the first step laboratory test to diagnose a urinary tract infection (UTI) which is a common infectious disease diagnosed in the laboratories. Early treatment of UTI is very important in order to prevent long-term complications. The gold standard to diagnose UTI is urine culture so there are a number of unnecessary urine culture requests. However, urine culture results are not available earlier than 24-36 hours. Besides, urine culture is expensive and causes time-consuming of treatment. Our aim in this study was to compare urine leukocyte esterase test and nitrite test of urine dipstick w ith urine culture to determinate the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV). Methods: Urine culture results and urine dipstick test results of patients who admitted to Selcuk University Hospital between May 2016 and May 2017 were collected retrospectively. The study included 11.169 patients and 3299 of them have positive urine cultures. Results: In total, 3299 (29.5%) patients have positive urine culture. Out of these culture positive samples, positive dipstick results’ ratios for leukocyte esterase and nitrite were 82.8% (n = 2733) and 22.4% (n = 774). Leukocyte esterase had 82.8% sensitivity and 68.1% specificity, with PPVs and NPVs of 52.1% and 90.5%, respectively. Conclusions: The NPVs are found significantly higher than PPVs and it shows that urinary dipstick is more reliable to exclude disease than to diagnose the disease. Clinicians should not order urine culture from all patients without ant clinic signs.
Chemical evolution of fluorine in the bulge , High-resolution K-band spectra of giants in three fields

Context. Possible main formation sites of fluorine in the Universe include asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, the v-process in Type II supernova, and/or Wolf-Rayet stars. The importance of the Wolf-Rayet stars has theoretically been questioned and they are probably not needed in modeling the chemical evolution of fluorine in the solar neighborhood. It has, however, been suggested that Wolf-Rayet stars are indeed needed to explain the chemical evolution of fluorine in the bulge. The molecular spectral data, needed to determine the fluorine abundance, of the often used HF-molecule has not been presented in a complete and consistent way and has recently been debated in the literature. Aims. We intend to determine the trend of the fluorine-oxygen abundance ratio as a function of a metallicity indicator in the bulge to investigate the possible contribution from Wolf-Rayet stars. Additionally, we present here a consistent HF line list for the K- and L-bands including the often used 23 358.33 angstrom line. Methods. High-resolution near-infrared spectra of eight K giants were recorded using the spectrograph CRIRES mounted at the VLT. A standard setting was used that covered the HF molecular line at 23 358.33 angstrom. The fluorine abundances were determined using spectral fitting. We also re-analyzed five previously published bulge giants observed with the Phoenix spectrograph on Gemini using our new HF molecular data. Results. We find that the fluorine-oxygen abundance in the bulge probably cannot be explained with chemical evolution models that only include AGB stars and the v-process in supernovae Type II, that is a significant amount of fluorine production in Wolf-Rayet stars is most likely needed to explain the fluorine abundance in the bulge. For the HF line data, we find that a possible reason for the inconsistencies in the literature, where two different excitation energies were used, is two different definitions of the zero-point energy for the HF molecule and therefore also two accompanying different dissociation energies. Both line lists are correct as long as the corresponding consistent partition function is used in the spectral synthesis. However, we suspect this has not been the case in several earlier works, which led to fluorine abundances similar to 0.3 dex too high. We present a line list for the K- and L-bands and an accompanying partition function.
Small-scale Pedestrian Detection Based on Somatic Topology Localization and Temporal Feature Aggregation

A critical issue in pedestrian detection is to detect small-scale objects that will introduce feeble contrast and motion blur in images and videos, which in our opinion should partially resort to deep-rooted annotation bias. Motivated by this, we propose a novel method integrated with somatic topological line localization (TLL) and temporal feature aggregation for detecting multi-scale pedestrians, which works particularly well with small-scale pedestrians that are relatively far from the camera. Moreover, a post-processing scheme based on Markov Random Field (MRF) is introduced to eliminate ambiguities in occlusion cases. Applying with these methodologies comprehensively, we achieve best detection performance on Caltech benchmark and improve performance of small-scale objects significantly (miss rate decreases from 74.53% to 60.79%). Beyond this, we also achieve competitive performance on CityPersons dataset and show the existence of annotation bias in KITTI dataset.
Paleointensity record from the 2.7 Ga Stillwater Complex, Montana

The record of geomagnetic intensity captured in the 2.7 Ga Stillwater Complex (Montana, USA) provides a statistical description of the Archean geodynamo. We present results of modified Thellier paleointensity experiments on 441 core specimens, 114 of which pass strict reliability criteria. The specimens are from 53 sites spanning most of the Banded Series rocks in the Stillwater Complex. On the basis of thermochronologic and petrologic evidence, we interpret the highest temperature component of remanence to be a late Archean thermoremanence, though the possibility remains that it is a thermochemical remanence. Thermal models indicate that the highest temperature magnetization component at each of the sites averages ∼20–200 ka of geomagnetic secular variation. The suite of sites as distributed through the Banded Series samples a roughly a 1 Ma time interval. The average of the most reliable paleointensity measurements, uncorrected for the effects of anisotropy or cooling rate, is 38.2 ± 11.3 μT (1σ). Remanence anisotropy, cooling rate, and the nonlinear relationship between applied field and thermoremanence have a significant effect on paleointensity results; a corrected average of 30.6 ± 8.8 μT is likely a more appropriate value. Earth's average dipole moment during the late Archean (5.05 ± 1.46 × 1022 Am2, λpmag = 44.5°) was well within the range of estimates from Phanerozoic rocks. The distribution of site‐mean paleointensities around the mean is consistent with that expected from slow cooling over timescales expected from thermal models and with secular variation comparable to that of the Phanerozoic field.