Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of artificial and natural materials ropes as substrates for settling and metamorphosis of pediveliger pearl oyster, Pinctada maxima (Jameson, 1901)

A study aimed at investigating the effects of four different materials ropes as substrates for settling and metamorphosis of tropical oyster, Pinctada maxima, pediveligers was conducted at laboratory scale. The number of pediveligers attached and metamorphosed on each substratum were counted at the termination of the experiment. Increment in shell length during settling and metamorphosis was also measured. Settling and metamorphosis were analyzed using One-Way ANOVA with substratum as the main effect. Two-Way ANOVA with time and substratum as the main effect on growth was also tested. The results showed that the settling and metamorphosis of pediveliger were affected by the substratum. The number of settled and metamorphosed pediveligers on polypropylene rope, natural ropes of Arenga piñata and Cocos nucifera was significantly higher than on the bottom of Pyrex glasses. No significant difference between numbers of larvae settled on polypropylene and natural ropes of Arenga piñata and Cocos nucifera appeared. A significant effect of time, but not of substratum, on growth occurred. Overall, settling and metamorphosis of P. maxima pediveliger larvae were strongly affected by artificial and natural ropes, while metamorphosis occurred haphazardly on the Pyrex glass. Growth occurred after settling and metamorphosis.
Totally stapled abdominal restorative proctocolectomy

A technique of totally stapled abdominal restorative proctocolectomy is reported in 20 consecutive patients using a 20 × 20 cm J pouch and a stapled ileoanal anastomosis. The stapled ileoanal anastomosis had to be abandoned in three patients because of attempted mucosectomy in one and megarectum in two. One patient receiving steroids had a covering ileostomy. The remaining 16 patients had a totally stapled procedure without a covering ileostomy. Three patients developed serious postoperative morbidity but they were the only patients receiving steroids at the time of the operation. Of the remaining 13 patients none developed serious complications, the median hospital stay was 14 days and the median operating time was 150 min. The operation may be a technical advance particularly in allowing pouch construction without ileostomy in fit patients who are not receiving steroids at the time of operation.
Assessing the properties of the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Index

This methodological study demonstrates how to strengthen the commonly used world health organizationpsilas quality of life index (WHOQOL) by using the consistency-driven pairwise comparisons (CDPC) method. From a conceptual view, there is little doubt that all 26 items have exactly equal importance or contribution to assessing quality of life. Computing new weights for all individual items, however, would be a step forward since it seems reasonable to assume that all individual questions have equal contribution to the measure of quality of life. The findings indicate that incorporating differences of importance of individual questions into the model is essential enhancement of the instrument.
Bioprocess Forces and Their Impact on Cell Behavior: Implications for Bone Regeneration Therapy

Bioprocess forces such as shear stress experienced during routine cell culture are considered to be harmful to cells. However, the impact of physical forces on cell behavior is an area of growing interest within the tissue engineering community, and it is widely acknowledged that mechanical stimulation including shear stress can enhance osteogenic differentiation. This paper considers the effects of bioprocess shear stress on cell responses such as survival and proliferation in several contexts, including suspension-adapted cells used for recombinant protein and monoclonal antibody manufacture, adherent cells for therapy in suspension, and adherent cells attached to their growth substrates. The enhanced osteogenic differentiation that fluid flow shear stress is widely found to induce is discussed, along with the tissue engineering of mineralized tissue using perfusion bioreactors. Recent evidence that bioprocess forces produced during capillary transfer or pipetting of cell suspensions can enhance osteogenic responses is also discussed.
ECGSIM: an interactive tool for studying the genesis of QRST waveforms

Background: Discussion about the selection of diagnostic features of the ECG and their possible interpretation would benefit from a model of the genesis of these signals that has a sound basis in electrophysiology as well as in physics. Recent advances in computer technology have made it possible to build a simulation package whereby the genesis of ECG signals can be studied interactively. Design: A numerical method was developed for computing ECG signals on the thorax, as well as electrograms on both endocardium and epicardium. The source representation of the myocardial electric activity is the equivalent double layer. The transfer factors between the electric sources and the resulting potentials on the heart surface as well as on the body surface were computed using a realistic thorax model. Results and conclusion: The resulting transfer factors were implemented in a simulation program. The program allows the user to make interactive changes in the timing of depolarisation and repolarisation on the ventricular surface, as well as changing the local source strength, and to inspect or document the effect of such changes instantaneously on electrograms and body surface potentials, visualised by waveforms as well as by potential maps and movies. The entire simulation package can be installed free of charge from www.ecgsim. org.
Hierarchical Levels of Detail for Fast Display of Large Static and Dynamic Environments

We present a new approach for fast display of large static and dynamic environments. Given a geometric dataset, we represent it using a scene graph and automatically compute levels of detail (LODs) for each node in the graph. For drastic simplification, i.e., reducing the polygon count by an order of magnitude or more, we compute hierarchical levels of detail (HLODs) that represent portions of the scene graph. When objects move in a dynamic environment, we incrementally recompute a subset of the HLODs on the fly. Our approach can efficiently handle scenes with a limited amount of dynamic changes. Furthermore, it supports two rendering modes: one that renders at a specified image quality and another that targets a desired frame rate. We efficiently render LODs and HLODs using display lists and achieve significant speedups on rendering large static and dynamic environments composed of tens of millions of polygons.
Optimized sampling for view interpolation in light fields using local dictionaries

We present an angular superresolution method for light fields captured with a sparse camera array. Our method uses local dictionaries extracted from a sampling mask for upsampling a sparse light field to a dense light field by applying compressed sensing reconstruction. We derive optimal sampling masks by minimizing the coherence for representative global dictionaries. The desired output perspectives and the number of available cameras can be arbitrarily specified. We show that our method yields qualitative improvements compared to previous techniques.
Online Advanced Angle Adjustment Method for Sinusoidal BLDC Motors with Misaligned Hall Sensors

This letter presents an improved approach for high performance operation of brushless dc (BLDC) motors with hall sensors. The hall sensors in BLDC motors are ideally placed 120 electrical degrees apart. However, hall sensor placement may be significantly incorrect, particularly in high-pole and small-sized motors. These misaligned hall sensors can cause serious torque ripple, and it can be difficult to apply advanced angle control. Therefore, a position error compensator is needed before an advanced angle control method is applied. In this letter, on the basis of the position error compensator, an online advanced angle adjustment method using input voltage and input current is proposed. Using the proposed method, balanced hall sensor signals can be obtained and the high-performance operation can be achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified through experimental results.
A New Method for Multi-frame Super-Resolution Reconstruction

In this paper, a new method for multi-frame super-resolution reconstruction is proposed. It builds up with three steps: motion estimation, frame interpolation and fusion, deblurring. Based on the pure translations motion model, a simple motion estimation method is firstly proposed. All measured frames are subsequently located to a fixed grid and interpolated using an effective technique called Steering Kernel Regression. Then, the reconstruction frame is obtained by fusion high-resolution pixels selected from all of the interpolated frames. Finally, the reconstructed frame is deblurred at the last step. Experimental results on simulate and real data confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method and demonstrate the Steering Kernel Regression's superiority to other interpolate methods such as cubic interpolation and the method of [9].
The Association of Specific Executive Functions and Falls Risk in People with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early-Stage Dementia

Background/Aims: Impairment in executive function is associated with a heightened risk for falls in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. The purpose of this study was to determine which aspects of executive function are associated with falls risk. Methods: Forty-two participants with a mean age of 81.6 years and a diagnosis of MCI or mild dementia completed five different executive function tests from the computerised CANTAB test battery and a comprehensive falls risk assessment. Results: A hierarchical regression analysis showed that falls risk was significantly associated with spatial memory abilities and inhibition of a pre-potent response. Conclusion: The concept of executive function may be too general to provide meaningful results in a research or clinical context, which should focus on spatial memory and inhibition of a pre-potent response.
Randomized Smoothing for Stochastic Optimization

We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures, both in expectation and with high probability, that have optimal dependence on the variance of the gradient estimates. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first variance-based rates for non-smooth optimization. We give several applications of our results to statistical estimation problems, and provide experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. We also describe how a combination of our algorithm with recent work on decentralized optimization yields a distributed stochastic optimization algorithm that is order-optimal.
Production of gurken in the nurse cells is sufficient for axis determination in the Drosophila oocyte

The asymmetric localization of gurken mRNA and protein in the developing Drosophila oocyte defines both the anteroposterior and dorsoventral axes of the future embryo. Understanding the origin of these asymmetries requires knowledge of the source of gurken transcripts. During oogenesis most transcripts in the oocyte are produced by the associated nurse cells, but it has been proposed that gurken is an exceptional oocyte-derived transcript. Using a novel application of a standard mitotic recombination technique, we generated mosaic egg chambers in which the nurse cells, but not the oocyte, could produce gurken. Gurken was properly localized in these mosaics and oocyte axial polarity was established normally, indicating that the nurse cells synthesize gurken and that their contribution is sufficient for Gurken function. Our data demonstrate the existence of a mechanism for transport of gurken from the nurse cells and its subsequent localization within the oocyte.
Full-text and Keyword Indexes for String Searching

In this work, we present a literature review for full-text and keyword indexes as well as our contributions (which are mostly practice-oriented). The first contribution is the FM-bloated index, which is a modification of the well-known FM-index (a compressed, full-text index) that trades space for speed. In our approach, the count table and the occurrence lists store information about selected $q$-grams in addition to the individual characters. Two variants are described, namely one using $O(n \log^2 n)$ bits of space with $O(m + \log m \log \log n)$ average query time, and one with linear space and $O(m \log \log n)$ average query time, where $n$ is the input text length and $m$ is the pattern length. We experimentally show that a significant speedup can be achieved by operating on $q$-grams (albeit at the cost of very high space requirements, hence the name "bloated"). In the category of keyword indexes we present the so-called split index, which can efficiently solve the $k$-mismatches problem, especially for 1 error. Our implementation in the C++ language is focused mostly on data compaction, which is beneficial for the search speed (by being cache friendly). We compare our solution with other algorithms and we show that it is faster when the Hamming distance is used. Query times in the order of 1 microsecond were reported for one mismatch for a few-megabyte natural language dictionary on a medium-end PC. A minor contribution includes string sketches which aim to speed up approximate string comparison at the cost of additional space ($O(1)$ per string). They can be used in the context of keyword indexes in order to deduce that two strings differ by at least $k$ mismatches with the use of fast bitwise operations rather than an explicit verification.
Farmers' Preferences for Crop Contracts

An empirical approach combining elements of principal-agent theory and transaction cost economics is used to determine farmers' preferences for contract terms in crop production. The approach is tested by asking grain farmers to rank contract choices and specify price premiums in simulated case situations. The statistical results indicate that farmers' preferences for rates of cost sharing, price premiums, and financing arrangements are significantly influenced by asset specialization and uncertainty associated with the case situations, and by selected business and personal characteristics.
On the Measurable Range of Absorption Cross Section in a Reverberation Chamber

Average absorption cross section can be measured in a reverberation chamber with an uncertainty estimated from the number of independent samples of the chamber transfer function taken during the measurement. However, the current uncertainty model does not account the loading effect of the object being measured or the presence of nonstochastic energy in the chamber, as characterized by the Rician K-factor. Here, the uncertainty model for the absorption cross-section measurements has been extended to include both of these effects for the case of stepped mechanical tuning with a paddle and frequency tuning. The extended uncertainty formula has been applied to predict the range over which absorption cross-section measurements can be made with a defined relative uncertainty in a chamber of given geometry, using both simple models for the reverberation chamber and the measured quality-factor and K-factor. The model has been validated using measurements on a set of absorbing cubes of different sizes compared to Mie Series calculation on sphere of equivalent surface area. The extended error model is particularly utile for the design of reverberation chambers and experiments for absorption cross-section measurements across a wide range of application areas.
Virtual Communities for Creating Shared Music Channels

We present an approach to automatically create virtual communities of users with similar music tastes. Our goal is to create personalized music channels for these communities in a distributed way, so that they can for example be used in peer-to-peer networks. To find suitable techniques for creating these communities we analyze graphs created from real-world recommender datasets and identify specific properties of these datasets. Based on these properties we select and evaluate different graph-based community-extraction techniques. We select a technique that exploits identified properties to create clusters of music listeners. We validate the suitability of this technique using a music dataset and a large movie dataset. On a graph of 6,040 peers, the selected technique assigns at least 85% of the peers to optimal communities, and obtains a mean classification error of less than 0.05 over the remaining peers that are not assigned to the best community.
Context caching using neighbor graphs for fast handoffs in a wireless network

User mobility in wireless data networks is increasing because of technological advances, and the desire for voice and multimedia applications. These applications, however, require fast handoffs between base stations to maintain the quality of the connections. Previous work on context transfer for fast handoffs has focused on reactive methods, i.e. the context transfer occurs after the mobile station has associated with the next base station or access router. In this paper, we describe the use of a novel and efficient data structure, neighbor graphs, which dynamically captures the mobility topology of a wireless network as a means for prepositioning the station's context ensuring that the station's context always remains one hop ahead. From experimental and simulation results, we find that the use of neighbor graphs reduces the layer 2 handoff latency due to reassociation by an order of magnitude from 15.37ms to 1.69ms, and that the effectiveness of the approach improves dramatically as user mobility increases.
USING CMAQ-AIM TO EVALUATE THE GAS-PARTICLE PARTITIONING TREATMENT IN CMAQ

Christopher G. Nolte, Prakash V. Bhave, Robin L. Dennis, K. Max Zhang, and Anthony S. Wexler 1 Atmospheric Modeling Division, National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC. 2 Atmospheric Sciences Modeling Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Research Triangle Park, NC. On assignment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC. 3 Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA.
Identifying Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation Efforts for Children into the West Java Development Planning

West Java is an Indonesian Province which has a high risk of climate change impacts particularly in terms of increased exposure from many natural disasters. A natural disaster occurs frequently in the West Java Province, making the region vulnerable due to the biggest population in Indonesia it belongs to. Children are the most vulnerable population facing climate change impact because their physiological condition is not fully developed yet. They have a low adaptation ability towards the predicted changes. Therefore, mainstreaming climate change adaptation for children into development planning is important. It is also critical in order to induce more effective adaptation program. This paper analyzes how far the current development plan in the West Java Province reckons child adaptation mainstreaming to climate change. Data collection methods used in this research are the secondary method through the related development plan and the primary method through an in-depth interview to the related government institutions. Based on the analysis results using a content analysis, the region has a potential entry point to mainstream the adaptation of climate change into the development plan, involving seven government institutions. The opportunity of entry point from the West Java development plan is found in Badan Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah /BPLHD (the Regional Environmental Management Agency) work plan. However, among these institutions, it is only BPLHD and the Health Department which almost fulfill all of the institutional capacity components to mainstreaming the adaptation of climate change for children into the West Java development planning. Therefore, both institutions are potentially recommended acting for initiators to induce coordination between the seven government institutions to mainstream the adaptation of climate change for children into the West Java development planning.
Tracking-based interactive segmentation of textureless objects

This paper describes a textureless object segmentation approach for autonomous service robots acting in human living environments. The proposed system allows a robot to effectively segment textureless objects in cluttered scenes by leveraging its manipulation capabilities. In our pipeline, the cluttered scenes are first statically segmented using state-of-the-art classification algorithm and then the interactive segmentation is deployed in order to resolve this possibly ambiguous static segmentation. In the second step the RGBD (RGB + Depth) sparse features, estimated on the RGBD point cloud from the Kinect sensor, are extracted and tracked while motion is induced into a scene. Using the resulting feature poses, the features are then assigned to their corresponding objects by means of a graph-based clustering algorithm. In the final step, we reconstruct the dense models of the objects from the previously clustered sparse RGBD features. We evaluated the approach on a set of scenes which consist of various textureless flat (e.g. box-like) and round (e.g. cylinder-like) objects and the combinations thereof.
Allergic Asthma: Influence of Genetic and Environmental Factors*

Allergic asthma is a chronic airway inflammatory disease in which exposure to allergens causes intermittent attacks of breathlessness, airway hyper-reactivity, wheezing, and coughing. Allergic asthma has been called a “syndrome” resulting from a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Worldwide, >300 million individuals are affected by this disease, and in the United States alone, it is estimated that >35 million people, mostly children, suffer from asthma. Although animal models, linkage analyses, and genome-wide association studies have identified numerous candidate genes, a solid definition of allergic asthma has not yet emerged; however, such studies have contributed to our understanding of the multiple pathways to this syndrome. In contrast with animal models, in which T-helper 2 (TH2) cell response is the dominant feature, in human asthma, an initial exposure to allergen results in TH2 cell-dependent stimulation of the immune response that mediates the production of IgE and cytokines. Re-exposure to allergen then activates mast cells, which release mediators such as histamines and leukotrienes that recruit other cells, including TH2 cells, which mediate the inflammatory response in the lungs. In this minireview, we discuss the current understanding of how associated genetic and environmental factors increase the complexity of allergic asthma and the challenges allergic asthma poses for the development of novel approaches to effective treatment and prevention.