Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long term treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension with beraprost, an oral prostacyclin analogue

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of one year's treatment with beraprost, an orally active prostacyclin analogue, in patients with severe pulmonary hypertension. PATIENTS 13 patients with severe pulmonary hypertension. This was primary in nine, thromboembolic in three, and caused by Eisenmenger syndrome in one. METHODS All patients underwent right heart catheterisation. Mean (SD) right atrial pressure was 5 (3) mm Hg, mean pulmonary artery pressure was 48 (12) mm Hg, cardiac index was 2.6 (0.8) l/min/m2, and mixed venous oxygen saturation was 68 (7)%. Beraprost was started at the dose of 20 μg three to four times a day (1 μg/kg/day), increasing after one month to 40 μg three to four times a day (2 μg/kg/day), with further increases of 20 μg three to four times a day in case of clinical deterioration. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class, exercise capacity measured by distance walked in six minutes, and systolic pulmonary pressure (by echocardiography) were evaluated at baseline, after one month's treatment, and then every three months for a year. RESULTS After the first month of treatment, NYHA class decreased from 3.4 (0.7) to 2.9 (0.7) (p < 0.05), the six minute walking distance increased from 213 (64) to 276 (101) m (p < 0.05), and systolic pulmonary artery pressure decreased from 93 (15) to 85 (18) mm Hg (NS). One patient died after 40 days from refractory right heart failure, and another was lost for follow up at six months. The 11 remaining patients had persistent improvements in functional class and exercise capacity and a significant decrease in systolic pulmonary artery pressure in the period from 1–12 months. Side effects were minor. CONCLUSIONS Oral administration of beraprost may result in long lasting clinical and haemodynamic improvements in patients with severe pulmonary hypertension.
39 COLLISION AND PROXIMITY QUERIES

In a geometric context, a collision or proximity query reports information about the relative configuration or placement of two objects. Some of the common examples of such queries include checking whether two objects overlap in space, or whether their boundaries intersect, or computing the minimum Euclidean separation distance between their boundaries. Hundreds of papers have been published on different aspects of these queries in computational geometry and related areas such as robotics, computer graphics, virtual environments, and computer-aided design. These queries arise in different applications including robot motion planning, dynamic simulation, haptic rendering, virtual prototyping, interactive walkthroughs, computer gaming, and molecular modeling. For example, a large-scale virtual environment, e.g., a walkthrough, creates a model of the environment with virtual objects. Such an environment is used to give the user a sense of presence in a synthetic world and it should make the images of both the user and the surrounding objects feel solid. The objects should not pass through each other, and objects should move as expected when pushed, pulled, or grasped; see Fig. 39.0. 1. Such actions require fast and accurate collision detection between the geometric representations of both real and virtual objects. Another example is rapid prototyping, where digital representations of mechanical parts, tools, and machines, need to be tested for interconnectivity, functionality, and reliability. In Fig. 39.0. 2, the motion of the pistons within the combustion chamber wall is simulated to check for tolerances and verify the design. This chapter provides an overview of different queries and the underlying algorithms. It includes algorithms for collision detection and distance queries among convex polytopes (Section 39.1), nonconvex polygonal models (Section 39.2), continuous collision detection (Section 39.3), penetration depth queries (Section 39.4), Hausdorff distance queries (Section 39.5), curved objects (Section 39.6), and large environments composed of multiple objects (Section 39.7). Finally, it briefly describes different software packages available to perform some of the queries (Section 39.8).
Queen ' s University Belfast-Research Portal Gene Sets Net Correlations Analysis ( GSNCA ) : a multivariate differential coexpression test for gene sets

Motivation: To date, Gene Set Analysis (GSA) approaches primarily focus on identifying differentially expressed gene sets (pathways). Methods for identifying differentially coexpressed pathways also exist but are mostly based on aggregated pairwise correlations, or other pairwise measures of coexpression. Instead, we propose Gene Sets Net Correlations Analysis (GSNCA), a multivariate differential coexpression test that accounts for the complete correlation structure between genes. Results: In GSNCA, weight factors are assigned to genes in proportion to the genes’ cross-correlations (intergene correlations). The problem of finding the weight vectors is formulated as an eigenvector problem with a unique solution. GSNCA tests the null hypothesis that for a gene set there is no difference in the weight vectors of the genes between two conditions. In simulation studies and the analyses of experimental data, we demonstrate that GSNCA, indeed, captures changes in the structure of genes’ cross-correlations rather than differences in the averaged pairwise correlations. Thus, GSNCA infers differences in coexpression networks, however, bypassing method-dependent steps of network inference. As an additional result from GSNCA, we define hub genes as genes with the largest weights and show that these genes correspond frequently to major and specific pathway regulators, as well as to genes that are most affected by the biological difference between two conditions. In summary, GSNCA is a new approach for the analysis of differentially coexpressed pathways that also evaluates the importance of the genes in the pathways, thus providing unique information that may result in the generation of novel biological hypotheses. Contact: gvglazko@uams.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
A generalized sweeping method for SGC modeling

This paper presents a method for generation of a swept volume. A generalized sweeping method for CSG modeling is proposed and applied to generate a swept volume. The basic idea of this method is as follows: a 2-D closed curve defined on a plane is swept in 3-D space along a 3-D curve to generate a swept volume: then an enveloping surface of a 2-D closed curve becomes an entire bounding surface of a swept volume. Since the shape and the dimension of a 2-D closed curve can be varied during the sweep, not only simple swept volumes (i.e., a rotational and an extruded solids) but also more complicated swept volumes with blending surfaces can be generated. In addition, set operations between the generated swept volume and an ordinary Primitive can be executed just like between two Primitives. Therefore, this method strengthens the modeling capability of CSG-based solid modelers. In this paper, we clarify how to apply this method to generate complex solid shapes such as a solid with a blending surface to join two disconnected solids, fillet volumes for rounding corners, and swept volumes formed by the movement of NC tools. Then the algorithm of this work is developed and performed with the CSG-based CAD/CAM system TIPS-1. key words: sweep, sweeping method, swept volume, blending surface, corner rounding, solid modeling, CSG
Structure and mechanism of the tripartite CusCBA heavy-metal efflux complex

Gram-negative bacteria frequently expel toxic chemicals through tripartite efflux pumps that span both the inner and outer membranes. The three parts are the inner membrane, substrate-binding transporter (or pump); a periplasmic membrane fusion protein (MFP, or adaptor); and an outer membrane-anchored channel. The fusion protein connects the transporter to the channel within the periplasmic space. One such efflux system CusCBA is responsible for extruding biocidal Cu(I) and Ag(I) ions. We previously described the crystal structures of both the inner membrane transporter CusA and the MFP CusB of Escherichia coli. We also determined the co-crystal structure of the CusBA adaptor–transporter efflux complex, showing that the transporter CusA, which is present as a trimer, interacts with six CusB protomers and that the periplasmic domain of CusA is involved in these interactions. Here, we summarize the structural information of these efflux proteins, and present the accumulated evidence that this efflux system uses methionine residues to bind and export Cu(I) and Ag(I). Genetic and structural analyses suggest that the CusA pump is capable of picking up the metal ions from both the periplasm and the cytoplasm. We propose a stepwise shuttle mechanism for this pump to export metal ions from the cell.
Auto-Layering Wavelet Transfer to Remove the Circumstance Effect and Noise

The accuracy of visibility measurement from night light sources image is usually affected by the circumstance light and noise. This paper presents an auto-layering wavelet transfer method to remove the circumstance effect and noise simultaneously. Firstly, the light propagation through the fog at night condition is formulized, where the model and features of night image with circumstance effect and noise is given. Secondly, we propose to use multi-scale features of wavelet transfer to decompose the image to remove the circumstance effect and noise, where an auto-layering method is used based on the energy ratio of wavelet coefficients. Experiments show that our method is able to remove the circumstance effect and noise simultaneously and to adjust the decomposed layering number automatically. Our method is not only suitable for many wavelet functions, but also preserves the light sources as well as their glows in the digital images. The relative error of using db4 is 3.16%, and the relative error of using sym2 is 2.02%.
Integrated optical modeshape adapters in InGaAsP/InP for efficient fiber-to-waveguide coupling

A concept for integrated optical modeshape adapters (IOMA's) for efficient fiber-to-waveguide coupling is realized in InGaAsP/InP. The integrated optical modeshape adapters (IOMA's) combine vertically tapered waveguide cores with simultaneously up-tapered upper claddings. Their OEIC-compatible fabrication process is based on diffusion-limited etching for the waveguide core tapers and selective area regrowth with LP-MOVPE for the up-tapered upper claddings, both using the same dielectric mask. First realized devices, when coupled to lensed single-mode fibers (SMF's), show optical losses as low as 1 dB per facet at 1.53- mu m wavelength. <<ETX>>
ExSearch: a novel vertical search engine for online barter business

E-Commerce has shown its exponentially-growing business value in the past decade. However, in contrast to the successful examples in online sales, such as Amazon1 and eBay2, the online barter business is still underexplored due to the lack of corresponding information aggregation service. In this paper, we design and implement a novel vertical search engine, called ExSearch, to aggregate online barter information for developing the barter market. Different from classical general purpose Web search engines, ExSearch adopts a focused crawler to gather related information from various websites. We propose to automatically extract the barter information from free-text Web pages such that the unstructured information is represented in structured databases. In addition, we utilize the data mining techniques such as regression to fulfill the missing information, which cannot be extracted from the Web pages. Finally, we validate and rank the search results according to user queries. Experimental results show that each component module in our proposed ExSearch system is efficient and effective. The volunteer users are satisfied by and interested in this novel vertical search engine.
Real-time, color image barrel distortion removal

This paper describes a new hardware architecture for barrel distortion correction in a color video stream. Such distortion is omnipresent in images acquired with a large field of view optics: wide-angle or fish-eye lenses. The designed platform is composed of a standard image sensor, a USB video class ASIC chip, a low cost FPGA and a SDRAM memory chip. Image processing algorithms are implemented in the FPGA, which is inserted between the sensor and the ASIC. The FPGA is connected to an external SDRAM in which a frame buffer is implemented. Barrel distortion is modeled using a polynominal relationship between corrected and distorted image spaces. Combinatorial logic circuit at the frame buffer output validates correct ordering of luminance and chrominance bytes in the data stream. The proposed design is capable of removing geometric distortion from 640 × 480 pixel images at the rate of 30 frames per second. Colors in reconstructed images are within ΔE = 2 from the originals in the CIELab color space.
Using Behavior Objects to Manage Complexity in Virtual Worlds

The quality of high-level AI of nonplayer characters (NPCs) in commercial open-world games (OWGs) has been increasing during the past years. However, due to constraints specific to the game industry, this increase has been slow and it has been driven by larger budgets rather than adoption of new complex AI techniques. Most of the contemporary AI is still expressed as hard-coded scripts. The complexity and manageability of the script codebase is one of the key limiting factors for further AI improvements. In this paper, we address this issue. We present behavior objects (BO)—a general approach to development of NPC behaviors for large OWGs. BOs are inspired by object-oriented programming and extend the concept of smart objects. Our approach promotes encapsulation of data and code for multiple related behaviors in one place, hiding internal details and embedding intelligence in the environment. BOs are a natural abstraction of five different techniques that we have implemented to manage AI complexity in an upcoming AAA OWG. We report the details of the implementations in the context of behavior trees and the lessons learned during development. Our study should serve as an inspiration for AI architecture designers from both the academia and the industry.
A Meta Model for Process Mining Data

Modern process-aware information systems store detailed information about processes as they are being executed. This kind of information can be used for very different purposes. The term process mining refers to the techniques and tools to extract knowledge (e.g., in the form of models) from this. Several key players in this area have developed sophisticated process mining tools, such as Aris PPM and the HP Business Cockpit, that are capable of using the information available to generate meaningful insights. What most of these commercial process mining tools have in common is that installation and maintenance of the systems requires enormous effort, and deep knowledge of the underlying information system. Moreover, information systems log events in different ways. Therefore, the interface between process-aware information systems and process mining tools is far from trivial. It is vital to correctly map and interpret event logs recorded by the underlying information systems. Therefore, we propose a meta model for event logs. We give the requirements for the data that should be available, both informally and formally. Furthermore, we back our meta model up with an XML format called MXML and a tooling framework that is capable of reading MXML files. Although, the approach presented in this paper is very pragmatic, it can be seen as a first step towards and ontological analysis of process mining data.
Design and management of DOT: A Distributed OpenFlow Testbed

With the growing adoption of Software Defined Networking (SDN), there is a compelling need for SDN emulators that facilitate experimenting with new SDN-based technologies. Unfortunately, Mininet [1], the de facto standard emulator for software defined networks, fails to scale with network size and traffic volume. The aim of this paper is to fill the void in this space by presenting a low cost and scalable network emulator called Distributed OpenFlow Testbed (DOT). It can emulate large SDN deployments by distributing the workload over a cluster of compute nodes. Through extensive experiments, we show that DOT can overcome the limitations of Mininet and emulate larger networks. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of DOT on four Rocketfuel topologies. DOT is available for public use and community-driven development at dothub.org.
Out-of-core multigrid solver for streaming meshes

We present an out-of-core multigrid for solving the Poisson equation defined over gigantic meshes. This enables gradient-domain operations on out-of-core meshes with irregular connectivity. Taking a streaming mesh and boundary constraints as input, our solver builds a multigrid hierarchy and refines the multigrid solution progressively by performing all operations as streaming computations. A set of rules are carefully designed to make neighboring multigrid nodes perform tasks cooperatively and efficiently. With a sublinear memory growth with respect to the number of mesh vertices, our approach handles meshes with 14M vertices using merely 84MB of memory, while an equivalent in-core multigrid implementation fails to fit into 2GB memory space.
Resilience of d-wave superconductivity to nearest-neighbor repulsion

Many theoretical approaches find d-wave superconductivity in the prototypical one-band Hubbard model for high-temperature superconductors. At strong-coupling (U > W, where U is the on-site repulsion and W=8t the bandwidth) pairing is controlled by the exchange energy J=4t^2/U. One may then surmise, ignoring retardation effects, that near-neighbor Coulomb repulsion V will destroy superconductivity when it becomes larger than J, a condition that is easily satisfied in cuprates for example. Using Cellular Dynamical Mean-Field theory with an exact diagonalization solver for the extended Hubbard model, we show that pairing, at strong coupling, is preserved even when V>>J, as long as V<U/2. While at weak coupling V always reduces the spin fluctuations and hence d-wave pairing, at strong coupling, in the underdoped regime, the increase of J=4t^2/(U-V) caused by V increases binding at low frequency while the pair-breaking effect of V is pushed to high frequency. These two effects compensate in the underdoped regime, in the presence of a pseudogap. While the pseudogap competes with superconductivity, the proximity to the Mott transition that leads to the pseudogap, and retardation effects, protect d-wave superconductivity from V.
A case study on the application of UML in legacy development

Model-driven development with UML is becoming a de facto standard in industry, but although much of today's software development is about enhancing existing systems, there is no welldefined process for model-driven development in the context of legacy systems. To ensure the relevance of research on modeldriven development with UML, there is a need for studies of actual use of UML in software development companies. As part of a software process initiative, we conducted a case study in a large development project where some of the development teams enhanced existing components, while other teams developed software from scratch. The results from this case study showed that those who applied UML in modelling and enhancing legacy software experienced more challenges and fewer benefits from the use of UML than did the developers who modelled and developed new software. Overall our results show a need for better methodological support on applying UML in legacy development.
Process of social integration: the key to making enterprise systems-enabled change

Most previous enterprise systems (ES) studies focus on the ES implementation issues or critical success factors without taking into consideration that complex relationship of reciprocal causality between technology and human factors would cause the failure of ES to meet organizational expectations or deliverance of values promised. In this study, we try to understand the concept of social integration (SI) through exploring the use of ES in supporting organizational daily operations. In our in-depth case study of Talam, 40 interviews were collected from a company with ten years of experience in the management and application of ES. We have successfully identified six social integration processes and three social integration mechanisms that help to explain the interrelationship of the dynamic nature of social integration. _
Behavioral Cloning of Student Pilots with Modular Neural Networks

This paper investigates how behavioral cloning can be used to decrease training time for students learning to y on simulators. The challenges presented to each student must be tailored to their unique learning experiences. This requires an intelligent training regime that exploits a model of each student that predicts where the student's performance will be de cient. Here we show that cloning the behavior of student pilots with a modular neural network results in the automatic decomposition of the behavior into sets of skills. This decomposition may provide a means for identifying when certain skills are acquired by students and which skills are decient. This information may then be used to decrease training time by altering the sequence of simulation experiences to just those that the student needs.
Speaker-dependent speech recognition based on phone-like units models-application to voice dialling

This paper presents a speaker dependent speech recognition with application to voice dialling. This work has been developed under the constraints imposed by voice dialling applications, i.e., low memory requirements and limited training material. Two methods for producing speaker dependent word baseforms based on phone-like units (PLU) are presented and compared: (1) a classical vector quantizer is used to divide the space into regions associated with PLUs; (2) a speaker independent hybrid HMM/MLP recognizer is used to generate speaker dependent PLU based models. This work shows that very low error rates can be achieved even with very simple systems, namely a DTW-based recognizer. However, the best results are achieved when using the hybrid HMM/MLP system to generate the word baseforms. Finally, a real-time demonstration simulating voice dialling functions and including keyword spotting and rejection capabilities has been set up and can be tested online.
Using semantic relatedness measures with dynamic self-organizing maps for improved text clustering

Growing volumes of text and increasing expectations on the complexity of analysis entail advanced approaches to text mining. Unsupervised text clustering is an efficient approach to determine structural groupings in a text corpus without the impact of external bias. The information content of such structural groupings needs to be enhanced by integrating semantics into the cluster outcomes. This integration can eventuate at different stages of the clustering process where semantic relatedness measures can be used for the integration. In this paper we propose a novel method of semantics integration to cluster separation in a dynamic self-organizing map algorithm. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and the value of semantics integration for cluster separation with empirical results from two benchmark text datasets.