Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of preterm birth on later FEV1: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Increasing evidence suggests that preterm birth affects later lung function. We systematically reviewed the literature to determine whether percentage predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (%FEV1) is lower in later life in preterm-born subjects, with or without bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), compared with term-born controls. Methods Studies reporting %FEV1, with or without a term-born control group, in later life for preterm-born subjects (<37 weeks gestation) were extracted from eight databases. Data were analysed using Review Manager and STATA. The quality of the studies was assessed. Results From 8839 titles, 1124 full articles were screened and 59 were included: 28 studied preterm-born children without BPD, 24 with BPD28 (supplemental oxygen dependency at 28 days), 15 with BPD36 (supplemental oxygen dependency 36 weeks postmenstrual age) and 34 born preterm. For the preterm-born group without BPD and for the BPD28 and BPD36 groups the mean differences (and 95% CIs) for %FEV1 compared with term-born controls were −7.2% (−8.7% to −5.6%), −16.2% (−19.9% to −12.4%) and −18.9% (−21.1% to −16.7%), respectively. Pooling all data on preterm-born subjects whether or not there was a control group gave a pooled %FEV1 estimate of 91.0% (88.8% to 93.1%) for the preterm-born cohort without BPD, 83.7% (80.2% to 87.2%) for BPD28 and 79.1% (76.9% to 81.3%) for BPD36. Interestingly, %FEV1 for BPD28 has improved over the years. Conclusions %FEV1 is decreased in preterm-born survivors, even those who do not develop BPD. %FEV1 of survivors of BPD28 has improved over recent years. Long-term respiratory follow-up of preterm-born survivors is required as they may be at risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
An Authentication Protocol for Sensor Networks Using Pairings

Wireless Sensor Networks are a rapid grown technology trying to adopt several new applications. Such applications have brought new challenges to the table and in consequence there are services that became to be critical factors, just like authenticity in WSN. Node authenticity in WSN is a commodity service that allows verifying that the message source is a node belonging to the sensor network, providing a countermeasure against node impersonation and message’s injection. However, such service is considered too expensive when public key cryptography is involved. In this paper an authentication protocol for WSN is described with an estimation of costs on operations over the base field.
Two New Operators for IGOR2 to Increase Synthesis Efficiency

Inductive program synthesis addresses the problem of automatically generating computer programs from incomplete specifications such as input/output examples. Potential applications range from automated software development to end-user programming to autonomous intelligent agents that learn from experience or observation. We present a recent version of the domain-independent algorithm Igor2 for the inductive synthesis of recursive functional programs, represented as rewriting rules. Igor2 combines classical analytical methods, that detect recursion by matching I/O examples, with search in program spaces as applied by recent generate-and-test methods; thereby widening the class of programs that are synthesizable in reasonable time. In particular, we present two recent improvements over an earlier Igor2 version which significantly increase the efficiency of the synthesis. Functions that were not inducible in several minutes are now induced in several seconds. It has already been shown that an earlier version of Igor2 outperforms other recent systems on several problems. In the empirical evaluation here, we show the significance of the improved synthesis operators by means of more complex problems, most of which were not tractable for Igor2 until now.
Package-Based Software Development

The main goal of component-based software engineering is to decrease development time and development costs of software systems, by reusing prefabricated building blocks. Here we focus on software reuse within the implementation of such component-based applications, and on the corresponding software development process. As it turns out, achieving effective reuse practice between the components of a single application and between the components of multiple applications has serious effects on the complexity of the software development process. While software reuse demands for separation (of reusable blocks), the software development process demands for integration. Consequently, achieving optimal software reuse practice and an efficient development process are goals that seem hard to unite. Here we discuss how these goals can be combined. We propose techniques that promote fine-grained software reuse across system, group, and institute boundaries, as well as integrated development of component compositions. We describe these techniques and demonstrates how they can be used in practice.
Open Access Study Protocol: Home-based Physical Rehabilitation for Survivors of a Critical Illness [actrn12605000166673]

which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Introduction Numerous primary studies and several review papers have highlighted delayed physical and psychological recovery for survivors of critical illness, often beyond 6 months after discharge. This randomized controlled trial with blinded assessment aims to test the effects of an 8-week, home-based, individually tailored physical rehabilitation programme on physical and psychological recovery for survivors of a critical illness after discharge from hospital.
Fast indexing and searching strategies for feature-based image database systems

Because visual data require a large amount of memory and computing power for storage and processing, it is greatly de- sired to efficiently index and retrieve the visual information from im- age database systems. We propose efficient indexing and searching strategies for feature-based image database systems, in which un- compressed and compressed domain image features are employed. Each query or stored image is represented by a set of features extracted from the image. The weighted square sum error distance is employed to evaluate the ranks of retrieved images. Many fast clustering and searching techniques exist for the square sum error distance used in vector quantization (VQ), in which different features have identical weighting coefficients. In practice, different features may have different dynamic ranges and different importances, i.e., different features may have different weighting coefficients. We de- rive a set of inequalities based on the weighted square sum error distance and employ it to speed up the indexing (clustering) and searching procedures for feature-based image database systems. Good simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed ap- proaches. © 2005 SPIE and IS&T. (DOI: 10.1117/1.1866148)
Immunoinformatics--the new kid in town.

The astounding diversity of immune system components (e.g. immunoglobulins, lymphocyte receptors, or cytokines) together with the complexity of the regulatory pathways and network-type interactions makes im munology a combinatorial science. Currently available data represent only a tiny fraction of possible situations and data continues to accrue at an exponential rate. Computational analysis has therefore become an essential element of immunology research with a main role of immunoinformatics being the management and analysis of immunological data. More advanced analyses of the immune system using computational models typically involve conversion of an immunological question to a computational problem, followed by solving of the computational problem and translation of these results into biologically meaningful answers. Major immunoinformatics developments include immunological databases, sequence analysis, structure modelling, mathematical modelling of the immune system, simulation of laboratory experiments, statistical support for immunological experimentation and immunogenomics. In this paper we describe the status and challenges within these sub-fields. We foresee the emergence of immunomics not only as a collective endeavour by researchers to decipher the sequences of T cell receptors, immunoglobulins, and other immune receptors, but also to functionally annotate the capacity of the immune system to interact with the whole array of selfand non-self entities, including genome-to-genome interactions.
No Effects and No Control of Epibionts in Two Species of Temperate Pycnogonids

Essentially all surfaces of marine plants and animals host epibionts. These organisms may harm their hosts in a number of ways, including impeding gas exchange or increasing the costs of locomotion. Epibionts can also be beneficial. For example, they may camouflage their hosts, and photosynthetic epibionts can produce oxygen. In general, however, the costs of epibionts appear to outweigh their benefits. Many organisms, therefore, shed epibionts by grooming, molting, or preventing them from initially attaching, using surface waxes and cuticular structures. In this study, we examined how epibionts affect local oxygen supply to temperate species of pycnogonids (sea spiders). We also tested the effectiveness of different methods that pycnogonids may use to control epibionts (grooming, cuticle wettability, and cuticular waxes). In two temperate species: Achelia chelata and Achelia gracilipes, epibionts consisted primarily of algae and diatoms, formed layers approximately 0.25-mm thick, and they colonized at least 75% of available surface area. We used microelectrodes to measure oxygen levels in and under the layers of epibionts. In bright light, these organisms produced high levels of oxygen; in the dark, they had no negative effect on local oxygen supply. We tested mechanisms of control of epibionts by pycnogonids in three ways: disabling their ovigers to prevent grooming, extracting wax layers from the cuticle, and measuring the wettability of the cuticle; however, none of these experiments affected epibiont coverage. These findings indicate that in temperate environments, epibionts are not costly to pycnogonids and, in some circumstances, they may be beneficial.
Efficient sub-Doppler Transverse Laser Cooling of an Indium Atomic Beam

Laser cooled atomic gases and atomic beams are widely studied samples in experimental research in atomic and optical physics. For the application of ultra cold gases as model systems for e.g. quantum many particle systems, the atomic species is not very important. Thus this field is dominated by alkaline, earthalkaline elements which are easily accessible with conventional laser sources and have convenient closed cooling transition. On the other hand, laser cooled atoms may also be interesting for technological applications, for instance for the creation of novel materials by atomic nanofabrication (ANF). There it will be important to use technologically relevant materials. As an example, using group III atoms of the periodical table in ANF may open a route to generate fully 3D structured composite materials. The minimal requirement in such an ANF experiment is the collimation of an atomic beam which is accessible by one dimensional laser cooling. In this dissertation, I describe transverse laser cooling of an Indium atomic beam. For efficient laser cooling on a cycling transition, I have built a tunable, continuous-wave coherent ultraviolet source at 326 nm based on frequency tripling. For this purpose, two independent high power Yb-doped fiber amplifiers for the generation of the fundamental radiation at λω = 977 nm have been constructed. I have observed sub-Doppler transverse laser cooling of an Indium atomic beam on a cycling transition of In by introducing a polarization gradient in the linear-perpendicular-linear configuration. The transverse velocity spread of a laser-cooled In atomic beam at full width at half maximum was achieved to be 13.5 ± 3.8 cm/s yielding a full divergence of only 0.48 ± 0.13 mrad. In addition, nonlinear spectroscopy of a 3-level, Λ-type level system driven by a pump and a probe beam has been investigated in order to understand the absorption line shapes used as a frequency reference in a previous two-color spectroscopy experiment. For the analysis of this atomic system, I have applied a density matrix theory providing an excellent basis for understanding the observed line shapes.
North Atlantic Ocean Internal Decadal Variability: Role of the Mean State and Ocean‐Atmosphere Coupling

The origin of the decadal variability in the North Atlantic Ocean is investigated in a series of coupled and ocean‐only numerical experiments. Two versions of the IPSL‐CM5A model are considered, differing only by their atmospheric horizontal resolution (3.75° × 1.87° and 2.5° × 1.25°). When the ocean model is forced by the climatological surface fluxes from the low atmospheric resolution coupled model version, a 20‐year variability emerges, similar to the variability found in the coupled simulation. Such decadal variability is consistent with a large‐scale baroclinic instability of the mean flow in the west European basin. Increasing the atmospheric resolution leads to a more intense Icelandic low, which intensifies the western subpolar gyre, and warms the eastern North Atlantic subpolar gyre region. The mean state changes nearly vanish the associated internal oceanic variability under the corresponding climatological surface fluxes. Increasing the atmospheric resolution also produces a slightly weaker atmospheric stochastic forcing. Both the mean state and atmospheric variability changes are consistent with the decreasing amplitude of the variability in the coupled model. For both model versions, the amplitude of the internal oceanic variability is strongly enhanced in the presence of atmospheric stochastic forcing. Air‐sea coupling on the other hand has a moderate influence on the amplitude of the variability only in the low‐resolution model version, where the North Atlantic oceanic variability at 20 years increases by 23% due to coupling. The coupling effect is therefore modest and sensitive to the atmospheric horizontal resolution.
Target-Centric Features for Translation Quality Estimation

We describe the DCU-MIXED and DCUSVR submissions to the WMT-14 Quality Estimation task 1.1, predicting sentencelevel perceived post-editing effort. Feature design focuses on target-side features as we hypothesise that the source side has little effect on the quality of human translations, which are included in task 1.1 of this year’s WMT Quality Estimation shared task. We experiment with features of the QuEst framework, features of our past work, and three novel feature sets. Despite these efforts, our two systems perform poorly in the competition. Follow up experiments indicate that the poor performance is due to improperly optimised parameters.
Reproducibility of maximum aerobic power (VO2max) among soccer players using a modified heck protocol.

OBJECTIVE To determine the degree of reproducibility of maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max) among soccer players, using a modified Heck protocol. METHODS 2 evaluations with an interval of 15 days between them were performed on 11 male soccer players. All the players were at a high performance level; they were training for an average of 10 hours per week, totaling 5 times a week. When they were evaluated, they were in the middle of the competitive season, playing 1 match per week. The soccer players were evaluated on an ergometric treadmill with velocity increments of 1.2 km.h-1 every 2 minutes and a fixed inclination of 3% during the test. VO2max was measured directly using a breath-by-breath metabolic gas analyzer. RESULTS The maximum running speed and VO2max attained in the 2 tests were, respectively: (15.6 +/- 1.1 vs. 15.7 +/- 1.2 km.h-1; [P = .78]) and (54.5 +/- 3.9 vs. 55.2 +/- 4.4 ml.kg-1.min-1; [P = .88]). There was high and significant correlation of VO2max between the 2 tests with a 15-day interval between them [r = 0.97; P < . 001]. CONCLUSION The modified Heck protocol was reproducible, and the 15-day interval between the ergospirometric testing was insufficient to significantly modify the soccer players' VO2max values.
Airport Detection Based on a Multiscale Fusion Feature for Optical Remote Sensing Images

Automatically detecting airports from remote sensing images has attracted significant attention due to its importance in both military and civilian fields. However, the diversity of illumination intensities and contextual information makes this task difficult. Moreover, auxiliary features both within and surrounding the regions of interest are usually ignored. To address these problems, we propose a novel method that uses a multiscale fusion feature to represent the complementary information of each region proposal, which is extracted by constructing a GoogleNet with a light feature module model that has an additional light fully connected layer. Then, the fusion feature is input to a support vector machine whose performance is enhanced using a hard negative mining method. Finally, a simplified localization method is applied to tackle the problem of box redundancy and to optimize the locations of airports. An experiment demonstrates that the fusion feature outperforms other features on airport detection tasks from remote sensing images containing complicated contextual information.
The Evaluation of Parallel FEM Techniques Based on Graph Partitioning

This paper studies and compares PNR and rMSATS methods for load balancing in parallel finite element analysis. Both the strengths and weaknesses of two algorithms are discussed. Some possible improvements to the two algorithms are also suggested and studied. A benchmark for evaluating algorithms is described. Direct numerical comparisons among the considered partitioning algorithms are then conducted using this benchmark. In addition, we think different algorithms as vertices of a undirected weighted graph. Choosing an algorithm from different partition methods is a recursive graph partitioning problem when dealing with a certain FEM computations. Choosing algorithm use heuristic algorithm in this paper. The initial value is critical at the heuristic algorithm. Wrong initial value leads to long execution time.
The bestrophin mutation A243V, linked to adult-onset vitelliform macular dystrophy, impairs its chloride channel function.

PURPOSE It has been proposed that Best vitelliform macular dystrophy (BVMD) is caused by dysfunction in the Cl(-) channel function of human bestrophin-1 (hBest1), but some patients with BVMD who have the hBest1 A243V mutation have normal electro-oculograms, suggesting that this mutation may not affect Cl(-) channel function. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the A243V mutation affects the Cl(-) channel function of hBest1. METHODS Wild-type alanine at position 243 was changed to valine by PCR-based mutagenesis. Wild-type (WT) and A243V hBest1 were transfected into HEK-293 cells, and Cl(-) currents were measured with the whole-cell patch-clamp technique. The trafficking of proteins to the plasma membrane was tested by cell-surface biotinylation. RESULTS WT hBest1 induced Ca(2+)-activated Cl(-) currents in HEK cells that were >1 nA in amplitude. The currents produced by the A243V mutant, however, were only approximately 10% as large as WT. This was not due to the inability of the A243V mutant to reach the plasma membrane, as shown by cell-surface biotinylation. The A243V mutation changed channel anion selectivity. The WT current exhibited a relative permeability P(X)/P(Cl) order of SCN(-) > or = I(-) > or = NO(3)(-) > Br(-) > Cl(-) > HCO(3)(-) and a relative conductance G(X)/G(Cl) order of NO(3)(-) > SCN(-) > I(-) > or = Br(-) > or = Cl(-) > HCO(3)(-). However, the A243V current exhibited different sequences: P(X)/P(Cl) was SCN(-) > NO(3)(-) > I(-) > Br(-) > Cl(-) > HCO(3)(-) and G(X)/G(Cl) was SCN(-) > NO(3)(-) > or = I(-) > or = Br(-) > Cl(-) > HCO(3)(-). Unlike several other hBest1 mutations that have dominant-negative effects on wild-type channels, the A243V-mutation did not influence the wild-type current when A243V and WT hBest1 were transfected together. CONCLUSIONS The disease-causing A243V mutation is associated with altered hBest1 Cl(-) channel activity. The absence of a dominant negative effect of A243V is consistent with the more mild symptoms associated with this mutation. These results are interpreted in terms of the hypotheses that bestrophins are Cl(-) channels and regulators of Ca signaling.
Multiple plane tracking using Unscented Kalman Filter

An important pre-requisite for many tasks like Visual Servoing and visual SLAM is the task of tracking the underlying features. The use of planar features for these purposes has gained importance recently. Complementing current planar tracking works in the robotics literature, which use multiple features, we formulate the tracking problem using multiple planes. Inspired by the maturity in understanding of geometric quantities like the homography in computer vision, we develop a system based on the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) that localizes the camera and estimates the plane parameters of a scene, using homographies as measurement. Homographies are estimated using tracked feature points. We show that this framework provides significant robustness and stability to the system under significant changes of illumination, occlusion etc. Finally, we also propose a Convex optimization based solution for the initialization of this system, which is capable of producing globally optimal estimates, and is a useful algorithm in its own right. Several synthetic and real results are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.
Quaternary CMOS Combinational Logic Circuits

Good Characteristics and advantages of multi-valued logic (MVL) electronic systems and circuits are created great interest for its practical implementation. This paper presents voltage mode quaternary CMOS circuit design using 90nm technology. Basic gates such as quaternary inverter, NMAX, NMIN and Quaternary multiplexer are designed and simulated. Low power consumption of 14 µ W is observed at 2.2GHz with 1.2 V power supply. Circuits are verified using HSPICE simulations. The circuits described here are also suitable to be implemented in classical CMOS VLSI technology.
Lower Bounds for Restricted-Use Objects

Concurrent objects play a key role in the design of applications for multicore architectures, making it imperative to precisely understand their complexity requirements. For some objects, it is known that implementations can be significantly more efficient when their usage is restricted. However, apart from the specific restriction of one-shot implementations, where each process may apply only a single operation to the object, very little is known about the complexities of objects under general restrictions. This paper draws a more complete picture by defining a large class of objects for which an operation applied to the object can be “perturbed” $L$ consecutive times, and by proving lower bounds on their space complexity and on the time complexity of deterministic implementations of such objects. This class includes bounded-value max registers, limited-use approximate and exact counters, and limited-use collect and compare-and-swap objects; $L$ depends on the number of times the object can be accessed o.
Face recognition based on global and local features

This paper presents an evaluation of different methods considering the usually problems in face recognition. We consider variations in illumination, facial expression and facial details to propose a new method combining global and local face image features. This approach combines PCA, 2D-DCT and Gabor Wavelet Transform to obtain the global and local features representation. The Nearest Neighbor using the Euclidean distance performs the classification. The experiments were performed in the classical ORL and Yale face recognition databases. The proposed approach presented interesting results in comparison with the literature methods.