Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High retention rates within a prospective study of heroin users.

The process of achieving a high retention rate of subjects in a 12-month prospective study of intravenous heroin users in Sydney, Australia is presented. Self-referred heroin users were compared with heroin users from a court diversion programme. The retention rates throughout the prospective study interview schedules were high, ranging from 69 to 83% of the original sample. No statistical differences were detected between the proportions located at each interview, indicating a high retention rate was maintained despite the passage of time. It is argued that contact with State services, i.e. Methadone Maintenance Programmes and the legal system, particularly the prison service, contributed to this high maintenance. It is speculated that the effectiveness of location strategies reflect prominent characteristics of the populations studied.
A Multi-Cohort Study of Polymorphisms in the GH/IGF Axis and Physical Capability: The HALCyon Programme

Background Low muscle mass and function have been associated with poorer indicators of physical capability in older people, which are in-turn associated with increased mortality rates. The growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor (GH/IGF) axis is involved in muscle function and genetic variants in genes in the axis may influence measures of physical capability. Methods As part of the Healthy Ageing across the Life Course (HALCyon) programme, men and women from seven UK cohorts aged between 52 and 90 years old were genotyped for six polymorphisms: rs35767 (IGF1), rs7127900 (IGF2), rs2854744 (IGFBP3), rs2943641 (IRS1), rs2665802 (GH1) and the exon-3 deletion of GHR. The polymorphisms have previously been robustly associated with age-related traits or are potentially functional. Meta-analysis was used to pool within-study genotypic effects of the associations between the polymorphisms and four measures of physical capability: grip strength, timed walk or get up and go, chair rises and standing balance. Results Few important associations were observed among the several tests. We found evidence that rs2665802 in GH1 was associated with inability to balance for 5 s (pooled odds ratio per minor allele = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.82–0.98, p-value = 0.01, n = 10,748), after adjusting for age and sex. We found no evidence for other associations between the polymorphisms and physical capability traits. Conclusion Our findings do not provide evidence for a substantial influence of these common polymorphisms in the GH/IGF axis on objectively measured physical capability levels in older adults.
Micelle-templated, poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles for hydrophobic drug delivery

Purpose Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is widely used for drug delivery because of its biocompatibility, ability to solubilize a wide variety of drugs, and tunable degradation. However, achieving sub-100 nm nanoparticles (NPs), as might be desired for delivery via the enhanced permeability and retention effect, is extremely difficult via typical top-down emulsion approaches. Methods Here, we present a bottom-up synthesis method yielding PLGA/block copolymer hybrids (ie, “PolyDots”), consisting of hydrophobic PLGA chains entrapped within self-assembling poly(styrene-b-ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) micelles. Results PolyDots exhibit average diameters <50 nm and lower polydispersity than conventional PLGA NPs. Drug encapsulation efficiencies of PolyDots match conventional PLGA NPs (ie, ~30%) and are greater than those obtained from PS-b-PEO micelles (ie, ~7%). Increasing the PLGA:PS-b-PEO weight ratio alters the drug release mechanism from chain relaxation to erosion controlled. PolyDots are taken up by model glioma cells via endocytotic mechanisms within 24 hours, providing a potential means for delivery to cytoplasm. PolyDots can be lyophilized with minimal change in morphology and encapsulant functionality, and can be produced at scale using electrospray. Conclusion Encapsulation of PLGA within micelles provides a bottom-up route for the synthesis of sub-100 nm PLGA-based nanocarriers with enhanced stability and drug-loading capacity, and tunable drug release, suitable for potential clinical applications.
Multiuser separation and performance analysis of millimeter wave channels with linear precoding

In the conventional multiuser MIMO systems, user selection and scheduling has previously been used as an effective way to increase the sum rate performance of the system. However, the recent concepts of the massive MIMO systems (at centimeter wavelength frequencies) have shown that with higher spatial resolution of antenna arrays different users in the dense scenarios can be spatially separated. This in turn significantly reduces the signal processing efforts required for multiuser selection algorithms. On the other hand, recent measurements at millimeter wave frequencies show that multipath components only arrive from few angular directions leading to high spatial correlation between the paths and co-located users. This paper focus at the investigation of spatial separation among the users at the millimeter wave frequencies with fully digital linear zero-forcing transmit precoding considering various channel propagation parameters. Our analysis results convincingly give a proof that multiuser selection algorithms are still important for millimeter wave communication systems. Results also show that increased number of antenna elements does not give a major benefit to sum rate improvements as compared to the selection of correct number of users to be selected/scheduled.
An Electronically Reconfigurable Microstrip Antenna With Switchable Slots for Polarization Diversity

An electronically reconfigurable microstrip antenna with circular and linear polarization switching is presented. The prototype fabricated on a substrate of dielectric constant (εr) 4.4 and height (h) 1.6 mm is fed by a proximity feed fabricated using the same substrate. By controlling the bias voltage of two PIN diodes, the polarization of the antenna can be switched between three states; two states for linear polarization (horizontal and vertical) and one state for circular polarization (RHCP). Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed antenna has a cross polar level better than 10 dB in the linear polarization state and 18 MHz axial ratio bandwidth in the circular polarization state. The frequency and polarization diversities of this design could potentially improve the reliability of wireless communication systems.
Absence of an acute insulin response predicts onset of type 2 diabetes in a Caucasian population with impaired glucose tolerance.

CONTEXT In persons with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), both impaired insulin secretion and insulin resistance contribute to the conversion to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, few studies have used criterion standard measures to asses the predictive value of impaired insulin secretion and insulin resistance for the conversion to T2DM in a Caucasian IGT population. OBJECTIVES The objective of the study was to determine the predictive value of measures of insulin secretion and insulin resistance derived from a hyperglycemic clamp, including the disposition index, for the development of T2DM in a Caucasian IGT population. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS The population-based Hoorn IGT study consisted of 101 Dutch IGT subjects (aged < 75 yr), with mean 2-h plasma glucose values, of two separate oral glucose tolerance tests, between 8.6 and 11.1 mmol/liter. A hyperglycemic clamp at baseline was performed to assess first-phase and second-phase insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity. During follow-up, conversion to T2DM was assessed by means of 6-monthly fasting glucose levels and yearly oral glucose tolerance tests. RESULTS The cumulative incidence of T2DM was 34.7%. Hazard ratio for T2DM development adjusted for age, sex, and body mass index was 5.74 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.60-12.67] for absence of first insulin peak, 1.58 (95% CI 0.60-4.17) for lowest vs. highest tertile of insulin sensitivity, and 1.78 (95% CI 0.65-4.88) for lowest vs. highest tertile of the disposition index. CONCLUSIONS In these Caucasian persons with IGT, the absence of the first insulin peak was the strongest predictor of T2DM.
A Hierarchical, Bulk-Synchronous Stochastic Gradient Descent Algorithm for Deep-Learning Applications on GPU Clusters

The training data and models are becoming increasingly large in many deep-learning applications. Large-scale distributed processing is employed to accelerate training. Increasing the number of learners in synchronous and asynchronous stochastic gradient descent presents challenges to convergence and communication performance. We present our hierarchical, bulk-synchronous stochastic gradient algorithm that effectively balances execution time and accuracy for training in deep-learning applications on GPU clusters. It achieves much better convergence and execution time at scale in comparison to asynchronous stochastic gradient descent implementations. When deployed on a cluster of 128 GPUs, our implementation achieves up to 56 times speedups over the sequential stochastic gradient descent with similar test accuracy for our target application.
Object Boundary Detection in Images using a Semantic Ontology

We present a novel method for detecting the boundaries between objects in images that uses a large, hierarchical, semantic ontology - WordNet. The semantic object hierarchy in WordNet grounds this ill-posed segmentation problem, so that true boundaries are defined as edges between instances of different classes, and all other edges are clutter. To avoid fully classifying each pixel, which is very difficult in generic images, we evaluate the semantic similarity of the two regions bounding each edge in an initial oversegmentation. Semantic similarity is computed using WordNet enhanced with appearance information, and is largely orthogonal to visual similarity. Hence two regions with very similar visual attributes, but from different categories, can have a large semantic distance and therefore evidence of a strong boundary between them, and vice versa. The ontology is trained with images from the UC Berkeley image segmentation benchmark, extended with manual labeling of the semantic content of each image segment. Results on boundary detection against the benchmark images show that semantic similarity computed through WordNet can significantly improve boundary detection compared to generic segmentation.
The AgendaManager: A Knowledge-Based System to Facilitate the Management of Flight Deck Activities

Cockpit Task Management (CTM) is the process by which pilots selectively attend to tasks in such a way as to achieve their mission goal. Through our research we have found that CTM is a significant factor in flight safety, at least partly accounting for a substantial number of aircraft incidents and accidents. We developed an experimental knowledge-based system called the AgendaManager to facilitate Agenda Management (a superset of CTM) and demonstrated its superiority to a conventional crew monitoring and alerting system in a controlled evaluation study. The success of the AgendaManager is attributable not to its use of artificial intelligence technology. Rather, it is effective because it was developed using a sound human factors research and development approach. This approach and its application in AgendaManager development are the topics of this paper.
Heterosocial Perceptual Organization

Luce's (1959, 1963) choice model was used to characterize individual differences in men's perception of women's affect as friendly, sexually interested, sad, or rejecting. Women's clothing styles were associated with differences in the model's parameters. Sensitivity to sadness, rejection, and friendliness declined when women were dressed provocatively, whereas sensitivity to sexual interest increased. Provocative clothing was also associated with an increased bias to assume that positive affect was sexual interest rather than friendliness. Men at risk for perpetrating sexual aggression were less sensitive to women's affect than low-risk men were. They were also more likely than low-risk men to associate provocative clothing with sexual interest, and conservative clothing with friendliness. Results indicate that heterosocial perception may help to predict sexually coercive behavior and may be an important target for intervention.
Serotonin Receptors in Rat Jugular Vein: Presence and Involvement in the Contraction

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) is released during platelet aggregation, a phenomenon commonly observed in blood clot formation and venous diseases. Once released, 5-HT can interact with its receptors in the peripheral vasculature to modify vascular tone. The goal of this study was to perform a detailed pharmacological characterization of the 5-HT receptors involved in the contractile response of the rat jugular vein (RJV) using recently developed drugs with greater selectivity toward 5-HT receptor subtypes. We hypothesized that, as for other blood vessels, the 5-HT1B/1D and 5-HT2B receptor subtypes mediate contraction in RJV alongside the 5-HT2A receptor subtype. Endothelium-intact RJV rings were set up in an isolated organ bath for isometric tension recordings, and contractile concentration-effect curves were obtained for 13 distinct serotonergic receptor agonists. Surprisingly, the 5-HT1A and the mixed 5-HT1A/1B receptor agonists (±)-2-dipropyl-amino-8-hydroxyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydronapthalene (8-OH-DPAT) and 5-methoxy-3 (1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridin-4-yl) (1H indole) (RU24969) caused contractions that were antagonized by the 5-HT1A receptor antagonist [O-methyl-3H]-N-(2-(4-(2-methoxyphenyl)-1-piperazinyl)ethyl)-N-(2-pyridinyl)cyclohexanecarboxamide (WAY100135). The contractile curve to 5-HT was shifted to the right by WAY100135, 3-[2-[4-(4-fluoro benzoyl)-piperidin-1-yl]ethyl]-1H-quinazoline-2,4-dione (ketanserin; 5-HT2A/C receptor antagonist), and 1-(2-chloro-3,4-dimethoxybenzyl)-6-methyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-9H-pyrido[3,4-b]indole hydrochloride (LY266097; 5-HT2B receptor antagonist). Ketanserin also caused rightward shifts of the contractile curves to 8-OH-DPAT, RU24969, and the 5-HT2B receptor agonist (α-methyl-5-(2-thienylmethoxy)-1H-indole-3-ethanamine) (BW723C86). Agonists for 5-HT1B/1D/1F, 5-HT3, 5-HT6, and 5-HT7 receptors were inactive. In real-time polymerase chain reaction experiments that have never been performed in this tissue previously, we observed mRNA expression for the 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B, and 5-HT7 receptors, whereas no significant mRNA expression was found for 5-HT1A, 5-HT1B, and 5-HT1D receptors. These results support the 5-HT2A receptor as the main subtype targeted by 5-HT to contract the RJV.
Application and Simulation of SVPWM in three phase inverter

Comparing with commonly used sine-wave pulse-width modulation(SPWM) method, Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) method has higher utilization rate of DC voltage and smaller output waveform distortion. This article introduced SVPWM control technology into three-phase grid-connected inverter, created a main circuit mathematical model of three-phase grid-connected inverter and detailed the implementation of SVPWM modulation method with Matlab software. Through the establishment of a complete closed-loop system to simulate and research, giving the simulation waveforms and output grid-connected current waveform. The simulation results showed the advantages of SVPWM technique are more suitable for high-power applications.
Likelihood ratio decoding and confidence measures for continuous speech recognition

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are being integrated into a wider variety of tasks involving human-machine interaction. In evaluating these systems, however, it has become clear that more accurate means must be developed for detecting when portions of the decoded recognition hypotheses are either incorrect or represent out-of-vocabulary utterances. This paper describes the use of confidence measures based on likelihood ratio based optimization procedures for decoding and rescoring word hypotheses in an HMM based speech recognizer. These techniques ate applied to spontaneous utterances obtained from a "movie locator" based dialog task.
Using approximations to scale exploratory data analysis in datacubes

Exploratory Data Analysis is a widely used technique to determine which factors have the most in uence on data values in a multi-way table, or which cells in the table can be considered anomalous with respect to the other cells. In particular, median polish is a simple, yet robust method to perform Exploratory Data Analysis. Median polish is resistant to holes in the table (cells that have no values), but it may require a lot of iterations through the data. This factor makes it di cult to apply median polish to large multidimensional tables, since the I/O requirements may be prohibitive. This paper describes a technique that uses median polish over an approximation of a datacube, easing the burden of I/O. The results obtained are tested for quality, using a variety of measures. The technique scales to large datacubes and proves to give a good approximation of the results that would have been obtained by median polish in the original data.
Identifying Opinion Leaders to Promote Organ Donation on Social Media: Network Study

Background In the recent years, social networking sites (SNSs, also called social media) have been adopted in organ donation campaigns, and recruiting opinion leaders for such campaigns has been found effective in promoting behavioral changes. Objective The aim of this paper was to focus on the dissemination of organ donation tweets on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and to examine the opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages using social network analysis. It also aimed to investigate how personal and social attributes contribute to a user’s opinion leadership on the topic of organ donation. Methods All messages about organ donation posted on Weibo from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015 were extracted using Python Web crawler. A retweet network with 505,047 nodes and 545,312 edges of the popular messages (n=206) was constructed and analyzed. The local and global opinion leaderships were measured using network metrics, and the roles of personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions in obtaining the opinion leadership were examined using general linear model. Results The findings revealed that personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions predicted individual’s local opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages. Alternatively, personal attributes and social positions, but not professional knowledge, were significantly associated with global opinion leadership. Conclusions The findings of this study indicate that health campaign designers may recruit peer leaders in SNS organ donation promotions to facilitate information sharing among the target audience. Users who are unverified, active, well connected, and experienced with information and communications technology (ICT) will accelerate the sharing of organ donation messages in the global environment. Medical professionals such as organ transplant surgeons who can wield a great amount of influence on their direct connections could also effectively participate in promoting organ donation on social media.
Stochastic networked control systems with dynamic protocols

We consider networked control systems in which sensors, controllers, and actuators communicate through a shared network that introduces stochastic intervals between transmissions, delays and packet drops. Access to the communication medium is mediated by a protocol that determines which node (one of the sensors, one of the actuators, or the controller) is allowed to transmit a message at each sampling/actuator-update time. We provide conditions for mean exponential stability of the networked closed loop in terms of matrix inequalities, both for investigating the stability of given protocols, such as static round-robin protocols and dynamic maximum error first-try once discard protocols, and to design new dynamic protocols. The main result entailed by these conditions is that if the networked closed loop is stable for a static protocol then we can provide a dynamic protocol for which the networked closed loop is also stable. The stability conditions also allow for obtaining an observer protocol pair that reconstructs the state of an LTI plant in a mean exponential sense and less conservative stability results than other conditions that previously appeared in the literature.
SELF‐DECOMPOSABILITY AND OPTION PRICING

The risk‐neutral process is modeled by a four parameter self‐similar process of independent increments with a self‐decomposable law for its unit time distribution. Six different processes in this general class are theoretically formulated and empirically investigated. We show that all six models are capable of adequately synthesizing European option prices across the spectrum of strikes and maturities at a point of time. Considerations of parameter stability over time suggest a preference for two of these models. Currently, there are several option pricing models with 6–10 free parameters that deliver a comparable level of performance in synthesizing option prices. The dimension reduction attained here should prove useful in studying the variation over time of option prices.
Diseases associated with leaky hemichannels

Hemichannels (HCs) and gap junction channels (GJCs) formed by protein subunits called connexins (Cxs) are major pathways for intercellular communication. While HCs connect the intracellular compartment with the extracellular milieu, GJCs allow the interchange of molecules between cytoplasm of two contacting cells. Under physiological conditions, HCs are mostly closed, but they can open under certain stimuli allowing the release of autocrine and paracrine molecules. Moreover, some pathological conditions, like ischemia or other inflammation conditions, significantly increase HCs activity. In addition, some mutations in Cx genes associated with human diseases, such as deafness or cataracts, lead to the formation of more active HCs or “leaky HCs. ” In this article we will revise cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the appearance of leaky HCs, and the consequences of their expression in different cellular systems and animal models, in seeking a common pattern or pathological mechanism of disease.
Human Pose Estimation in 3-D Space Using Adaptive Control Law With Point-Cloud-Based Limb Regression Approach

This paper presents the algorithm of human pose estimation in 3-D space using adaptive control law with point-cloud-based limb regression approach. The proposed approach is a data-driven method for 3-D pose estimation of human. In addition, we exploit the inverse relationship between the estimated parameter and the pose of limb, proposing a hybrid scheme, the combination of indirect adaptive scheme in Cartesian coordinate, and indirect adaptive scheme in spherical space. The experimental results show the ability of error tolerance, even dealing with sparse, partial, and noisy limb data. The comparison of the ground truth is provided with the standard dataset. The computation speed is sufficient, as it is expected to be used in real-time applications or as the 3-D feature in other recognition frameworks. Finally, the proposed algorithm is demonstrated with the point cloud sensing in real scene and the experimental results are included in this paper.